Beautiful Child
by ADyingGalaxy
Summary: Ego never landed on Earth, but the Quills were meant for the stars regardless.
1. Prologue

_A Birthday present for one of my Yondad-loving friends! Please Enjoy!_

* * *

Outside, thunder was booming not far from their house, and Meredith turned her head just in time to see a flash of lightening beyond the windowpanes. It lit up the entire room, turning the waxy old candles all around her obsolete for just one moment.

Meredith rested her head back against the pillow before the strike ended. That one simple action had exhausted her and she found that it was best to continue being immobile, even while her hazy mind raced with a scatter of random thoughts. Her father was poking around in all the old drawers around the living room in the vain hope of finding some batteries for the flashlights he'd pried out of their crawlspace. Curtis had started helping by trouncing upstairs to see if there was anything in their only walk-in closet, but Meredith thought he'd been taking his sweet time up there.

Regina was in the kitchen, probably drinking that old red wine their daddy kept in the back cupboard to the very last drop. The only one beside Meredith now was her brother Bill, unable to go too far with Peter in the crook of his arm.

Bill hadn't looked up from his nephew's face, transfixed on his extraordinary appearance with wide, unblinking eyes.

Meredith didn't have the strength in her to yank his chain over it, although he was acting like Peter was a sideshow attraction and not an hours old infant, currently fussing after the intense flash of lightning. Instead, what little strength she had she used to lift a hand to the baby's hairline. Just feeling his soft, warm skin was infinitely comforting to the new mother, whom sighed serenely.

"It's okay, Petey." She said weakly, brushing a finger over his forehead. Her baby kept fussing, tiny nose wrinkling from being awoken so abruptly. "It's alright, baby, it's alright."

"Here, Bill." Their father came into the living room sans batteries and with his arms outstretched. Bill reacted rather slowly in turn before he passed Peter along and let his father sit down beside Meredith once again. "I got him."

Although she wished that she could've stayed awake until the baby was calm, Meredith could feel herself slipping away with the image of her daddy swaddling Peter close to his chest. She smiled softly; it hadn't been more than a few hours ago that Meredith had had to reassure her hysterical father that the baby wasn't suffocating.

No, her little baby was perfectly healthy and breathing just fine. His skin **was meant** to be the same color as Regina's prized amethyst ring, that's all.

* * *

Peter was born in the very same living room that she'd spent her childhood running around in.

The same living room where she spent her afternoons lying on her belly on an ugly orange crocheted rug, elbows up and hands on her head while swaying to the sound of Neil Sedaka from her daddy's turntable. Meredith would roll over onto the shear fiber floor, look up at the bright ceiling while her imagination ran wild to the songs she'd learned to love so much. Until Bill tripped over her, or Regina came in, smelling of smoke, but never letting that stop her from telling their dad that Meredith had his records scattered on the floor again.

Meredith hadn't let her siblings ruin what she considered to be a good time, not when she was naturally happy-go-lucky and spellbound by the rhythm of the music, not ever. Her daddy wasn't much of a stern parent in the first place, often letting his kids run free, as opposed to their mother – not that Meredith herself could remember the late Mrs. Quill very much.

She'd been told stories a plenty about her mother, though. Sometimes, their father would talk about his wife in-between reruns of the Twilight Zone and spoonfuls of ice cream right out of the carton. The ten-year-old Meredith may not have paid attention to it all, with her eyes glued to the screen and her heart rabbiting in her chest over what would happen next, but she'd had the image of what her mother may have looked and been like figured in her mind.

In fact, Meredith was sure that she'd been born a miniature version of her mother, in appearance if not in personality.

"Mom wasn't half as weird as you, Meri." Regina would always cut in, snottily, when dad compared Meredith and their mother.

Meredith would always show how much she cared what Regina thought in return, by sticking her tongue out at her sister when their father's back was turned.

The youngest Quill daughter thought that she was no odder than any other kid, at least no better or worse than the boys that played with trading cards during recess and went exploring through the abandoned junkyard next to the church nearest their school.

It shouldn't have mattered that Meredith liked watching those creepy black and white TV shows, or that she often drew ingenious creatures with claws and tentacles and horns on their heads in the margins of her schoolbooks. Those monster movies from the 50s that their dad watched when he came home from work, and that she would sneak down to watch from behind their paisley couch, were cool and gave her great ideas.

It was just what she was into. And it sure as hell wasn't any stupider than what Regina liked – sneaking out with her friends with stolen beer late at night.

And so, what if Meredith never quite grew out of those things. If she lacked motivation to properly learn equations until it applied to astronomy, and made her feel that much closer to the stars. Or if she hated the idea of her fingers being cut and calloused at fifteen, but the thought of playing guitar like Keith Richards made her play until her hands cramped up. And if, at the ripe age of seventeen, she danced out of the house with a transistor radio at her hip to go catch fireflies damn near every night.

The times, they are a changin' – But Meredith had grown to like her life the way it was.

More so when her sister and Curtis were married off and left town in opposite directions, though not out of Missouri for their dad's sake. And when Bill left for college to get his diploma and start teaching. That left the last Quill in Bonne Terre, free to express herself however she liked; if she didn't go bopping around in her bellbottoms near the old crones that whispered loudly whenever they saw her, of course.

Sure, it might've upset her that she didn't have the skills, or the ambition to learn the skills, necessary to be an astronomer or an astronaut. She hadn't even placed in her high school science fair, nor had she found better work than waitressing at the Goody Diner, but Meredith couldn't complain.

It should've been better than enough for a small-town girl.

* * *

When she could walk on her own two feet again, Meredith took Peter out onto the back porch and sat beneath the night sky with him in her arms. The darkness above them was dotted with bright stars and not a cloud in sight, and though the breeze that ruffled her hair and skirts was cold, it didn't keep her from smiling in relief. Being cooped up in the house for weeks at a time was not something Meredith reveled in. She'd missed the rustling of the trees and the sound of the far-off creek from out of the woods, and the smell of the sweet grass that grew wild by the end of the summers.

"What do ya think, baby?" She asked her son, carefully lifting the infant to give him a better look of the light above them. Peter gurgled, eyes opening and closing slowly as his mother spoke to him. He'd woken from a nap hours prior, but hadn't cried much, still drowsy.

Meredith looked at him adoringly, and ran gentle fingers close to the little red fin that grew from out of her boy's head until he could no longer stay awake. The stars continued to shine above them, some brighter than others.

* * *

 _A/N: Yes, I know that that isn't how genetics work, but Peter is a magical purple unicorn of a child in this story and that's that._


	2. (1) Everyday

Missouri, Earth

1977

* * *

Meredith drummed her fingers against the counter and tapped her foot while the song playing from the diner's jukebox faded in and out of her consciousness. She was leaning over the register, head turned in the direction of the clock above the cook's window and watching the minute hand go by, as she's done practically all day.

There were still fifteen minutes until 3 o'clock. Exactly fifteen.

"You've been staring at that clock every minute since you got here, girl." Patty, the only other waitress in the diner, said while ambling over to where Meredith lounged. "Standing silly won't make time go no faster, ya know."

Patty was a middle-aged woman with curls the same dishwater blonde as Meredith's own, and a full-face of makeup that looked like it'd been done by a teenager too. She pitched a hand in the direction of their stockroom.

"Scoot."

The younger girl shrugged amiably, already shedding her workers' apron and opening the cubicle to get out. "I know, but it's the weekend! I can't help bein' excited."

"Don't you get excited to go home on Fridays?" Meredith called while walking to the back and un-keying the back door.

Patty scoffed and opened the cash register. "It's still Thursday, Mere."

Meredith bounced on her feet. "Not for me!"

Quill sloshed water into her bucket before she began making her way from the back and onto the main floor where most of the walking got done. The diner floor was permanently scuffed from here to the farthest table away, making it easier to cut corners.

"Gerry let you take a three-day weekend?" The woman asked when Meredith was once again in front of her. Patty didn't bother hiding her jealous, flat tone but Meredith could've cared less.

"It's cus I told him I'd take Thanksgiving Day!" She was practically swing-dancing with her mop, sidling up to the register counter again with an easy grin. "Did ya hear that Logan's Run is gettin' its own show? It's starting tonight."

Patty stared at her coworker, sour-faced but not at all surprised. "You're working on a holiday so you can go home 'n watch a television program..."

"It's the debut, Patty." Meredith pouted, hugging her mop to her chest.

Beside her, the woman shook her head and clicked her tongue, attention returning to count the money in the cash machine. "I wish I understood you, Quill."

Giggling, Meredith went back to mopping with a spring in her step. She glided between tables and chairs, leaning down to reach in between booths and scrub away with her swab with all the grace of a mediocre ballet dancer. There wasn't much to clean up in the restaurant, as very few patrons had come in over the last three hours, and Meredith was sure she'd be able to get a head start when it came to cycling home.

The girl hummed as she navigated down the hall, moving to a section where there was a fair few folk sitting on what she assumed was their lunch break. They looked to be electricians from a nearby power-plant, gussied up in workmen overalls with toolboxes at their sides and shiny bobbles on their utility belts.

"How could you not have felt it?" One of the workers, a man that Meredith recognized to be an old coworker of her daddy's when he'd still had his job, exclaimed as she got closer to their table. She'd always known the doughy mechanic as Mr. Hyde since she'd been an itty-bitty thing, and while he hadn't been a large presence in her life, Meredith could remember him being cheerily stalwart all those years ago.

Looking at him now, however, you never would've guessed. His face was bloated and worn, and his eyes were bloodshot as his mouth screwed up into a hard, firm line. Meredith stilled when she noticed that the man's hands were shaking as he spoke and had knocked a mug of coffee over the tabletop he and his workfellows were sat at. She dearly hoped the poor guy hadn't burned his hands while she'd been distracted earlier.

When had he come in anyway?

"I didn't feel or hear nothin' this morning." Another man replied. No one seemed to be that concerned with Mr. Hyde's words but Meredith, eavesdropping none-too-subtly in the background.

"Bet it was just your imagination, Mitch." A mustached man directly across from Mr. Hyde sipped his own coffee with a roll of his eyes.

"The ground was shakin' like crazy! Like it was stormin' in hell!" Mr. Hyde yelped back. "And the light! Light was flashing in all different colors right up on Gunn Hill, right over the town, but ain't no one here said a damn thing except me!"

"Ain't no one here as blitzed as you, Mitch."

A sandy-haired worker nearest the window hummed with a knowing look that nearly crossed the line into one of total condescension. "Yeah, man. How many did you knock back today? Ten? Twelve? A good forty or so?"

"Hey, hey, let's be fair here," Mustache frowned with mock seriousness. "The last time he came into work ravin' like a loon, he hadn't made it past two."

Mr. Hyde's face fell into an expression of conscious shame as the others snickered around him. Meredith frowned at the sight, feeling her blood begin to boil.

"Gentlemen," Meredith cut in when she could take it no more, drawn up to her full height. "If y'all are done, you can head on home – an' stop harassing Mr. Hyde while you're at it."

"We were just headin' out, no need to get yourself into a tizzy, sweetheart." One of the men waved his hand at her like she was a pesky gnat and four out of the five men stood up and began to shuffle away. Meredith watched them go with a hand on her hip and a hard glare until they were out the door.

She turned, peering from behind her mop at the one man left behind. The scent of strong ale wafted off the old man, but Mr. Hyde's swollen face was so red and strained with worry that Meredith felt sorry for him.

"Mr. Hyde, can I get you anything?" She asked softly. "A glass of water, maybe?"

The electrician looked up quickly, seemingly spooked by her appearance. It took him a second but he managed to smile politely at her. "Oh, hello Meredith."

She nodded. "Hello, Mr. Hyde."

"How've you been?" He continued, wiping his own tabletop with a used napkin. "I haven't seen you since… how long? Two years?"

"Just about!" Meredith agreed. "I've been swell, thank you for askin'."

"Yes… last I saw you was at Curt's wedding. How are he and his wife doin'? And your dad?" Mr. Hyde rattled off pleasantries at her like she was a brick wall, and Meredith's growing discomfort made her thoughts shift toward the time.

"Oh, everyone's just fine." Meredith answered when he was all out of questions, her eyes flicking to the clock on the far wall again. "Mr. Hyde, can I get you some water before I go? I'm almost done with my shift, y'see."

Mr. Hyde muttered unintelligibly before he answered. "Oh no, no, no."

"Um, okay." The girl dallied on her feet before she began to pick up the soiled dishes that had been left behind. "I'll just get these out of your way."

Meredith stacked plates and cups together, balancing them in her arms until a hand shot out and grasped her elbow. She was tugged rather forcibly toward Mr. Hyde, and when she turned to face him, Quill could smell the pungent alcohol on his breath.

"You seen any lights in the sky lately?" He breathed in her face, and Meredith instinctively pulled back, startled.

"I, uh…" His fingers were digging into her skin painfully. She whispered, "Lights?"

"Them lights that I saw this morning, they were right near where you Quills live." Mr. Hyde exclaimed. "They shown over your daddy's house before the earth started quaking! I seen 'em with my own two eyes and it wasn't like anything you could ever imagine!"

Meredith gaped. "I-I don't… I've been here all day, Mr. Hyde, since 5:30 in the AM."

Mr. Hyde looked at her intensely "Then ask your Dad! Greg might've seen 'em. He'll tell ya, I bet. You couldn't miss 'em once you'd seen those enormous lights from the sky."

"Quill!" She turned in Mr. Hyde's grip, and saw a concerned Patty staring at them from across the room. "It's 3 o'clock. Time to go."

Mr. Hyde let go of her in an instant, and Meredith stumbled to one side. She reached out blindly and steadied herself on a booster seat, hearing her own heart in her ears when she looked back over her shoulder. Mr. Hyde was back to mumbling at the table as if nothing had happened, eyes as wide as ever.

Meredith waved a 'thank you' to Patty before she all but flew out the door.

* * *

 _Everyday, it's a-gettin' closer_

 _Goin' faster than a roller coaster_

 _Love like your will surely come my way_

 _A-hey, a-hey hey_

Meredith sang along with the radio, steering her bike from side to side to make the trimmings from her handles flutter in the breeze. She grinned the moment the tune changed into a song by The Ramones and pedaled faster, until her hair was flying back like a sail on the wind. Her ride was bumpy as she rocked up clouds of dust and gravel beneath her wheels, but that made it all the more exciting.

Daddy didn't call her his wild child for nothing.

There was no reason to be worried anyhow. The Quills lived out in what her daddy called the boondocks of Bonne Terre, where the trees and the shrubbery became dense and their humdrum town fell away. Very few cars came or went 'round the woods that surrounded their house unless they belonged to her dad or his buddies, (even if the turns were too sharp for drivers to see her until the last minute) and it was a chilly Thursday afternoon. Dad would be home by now, and his friends wouldn't over until the week was done.

She was coming up to the last stretch homeward, over the steepest hill that always made her grumble inside, when she could already feel her calves throbbing in protest. Meredith would be nineteen in a month's time and it still irked her that she didn't have a car.

The teenager didn't like it, but she'd become increasingly aware of girls her age and how they all had cars of their own to drive around town while she was stuck with a bike. Then again, former classmates like Henny Foster and Rachel Gibbons had families that were well-off and could afford to have daughters with shiny new roadsters. Meredith's family had always been poor, and they had made do with what they could as far back as she could remember.

Meredith had made it a third of the way up before she was panting melodramatically, the cold air burning her lungs. She dragged her heels on the ground to hunch over her handlebars in defeat.

"I'm never gonna make it in time, not at this rate." She huffed.

Her body already ached from being on her feet since six in the morning, enduring snappy customers and lewd remarks and the high-pitched cries of Mrs. Jones's ill-behaved toddler. And of course, being jolted around by a drunken zappy Mr. Hyde like a ragdoll.

Meredith leaned over the bars, hair swinging loosely from her downtrodden head, for a few ticks. The only reason she had had to get up so early was to get a better advantage when it came to tips, and the only reason she was depending on tips was so she could save up for her own car – and the reason she wanted a car was so that she could have an easier time getting to and from work – as well as take it out for joyrides with the radio blasting because having a car meant freedom in every sense of the word –!

It was an unforgiving cycle.

She groaned, forcing herself up and out of her literal slump to swing a leg from over the bike frame and plant both feet on the dirt. She'd still had to walk the bike up the hill to flat land, and another quarter mile to the house, but at least it wasn't nightfall yet. Meredith breathed in and out slowly, watching her breath catch in the air like a puff of smoke. Logan's Run wouldn't be on for another hour at least, so if she made it home before 6 o'clock, she'd be in time to watch it.

The long trek up began with Meredith making up new lyrics to the strain of the radio still playing, a Marvin Gaye song was on this time.

"Since when did this station play baby-makin' music…?" She questioned futilely, feeling empty after her previous spark of excitement faded with the setting sun behind her.

She walked her bike steadily for a few wheel revolutions before Meredith stopped in her tracks, getting a sense that she was missing something. She looked about her person until she realized that her music was barely audible, as the radio had fallen behind without her notice. Meredith gasped, simultaneously wondering why God had it out for her today and hoping that her favorite possession in the whole wide world still worked. She dropped her bike to race over and pluck her radio off the dusty ground.

"Oh no! Please, please." Meredith begged the device as she pressed all its buttons. "Don't be broken. Please."

Words and string sounds came garbled out of its antennae. "Come on, sweetie. I'm so sorry I dropped you! Don't die on me!"

She thumbed the scroll on its side up and down and twisted the antennae in one direction, then the other until the sound was smooth once more and she sighed with relief. Meredith carefully turned the volume way up before stashing it back in her pocket and turning on her feet, only to do a double-take as she spotted something in her line of vision that she hadn't while riding up.

There was an enormous gap in the middle of the woods before her, where giant trees had uprooted and fallen like dominos to the land below.


	3. (2) A Hard Day's Night

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* * *

She was gonna miss Logan's Run for sure, now.

Meredith stood at the mouth of the forest, surveying the trees that had been knocked asunder up close. Getting a good look at the damage, Meredith noted that the trees had not only been uprooted, but that many had been smashed almost to splinters and looked as if they'd been flung outward by a giant. The rocks and shrubbery that strewn the affected trail were no better; while she hadn't memorized every rock and tree in the woods near her home, Meredith could tell by the bits of stone and dust in front of her that what once had been steadfast boulders had been pulverized.

The realization sent Meredith into a nervous shake, as she wondered what on Earth could smash pure rock into smithereens. The impact of a tree trunk might've cracked one here or there, or dynamite could've blown up everything in its path from a short range. But being so close, Meredith couldn't deny that her presumptions are far-fetched at best.

No way in hell could a stick of dynamite cut through the forest, not only leaving a dozen or so smashed trees and so on in its wake, but also scorch the terrain so thoroughly as to nearly evaporate the elements.

The littered ground stretched down an entire pathway went on and on, beyond her light of sight, and Meredith was certain that the sun was almost finished setting and that night would fall soon.

She hopped over the root of the nearest tree and followed the wreckage, burning curiosity at her heels.

It was slow going, even slower than she remembered it being when she'd been a kid with Bill and Curtis, in search of the white-tailed deer that would sometimes crop up their home and that they were sure lived around the inner creek. Meredith could hear the quiet rush of water up ahead, over downed branches and prickling thorns that scrapped at her bare shins while she walked past. Everything seemed as peaceful as it had ever been, regardless of the contradictory sight that met her every advancing step. Then again, aside from the sound of the stream, there was an unnatural calm around her. No birdsong, or claws scrapping against wood or snapping twigs apart from those beneath her feet could be heard as Meredith traveled deeper and deeper within.

"Ow!" Meredith yanked her jacket from an exceptionally stubborn bramble, and nearly took a tumble for her efforts.

She'd righted herself, moving the hair from her face to see that she had made her destination, intended or not. Rushing water was in sight, traveling down the uneven slope of Gunn woods at a whirlwind pace, over rocks and overgrowth, and a gigantic hole right at the center of its path.

Wait.

Eyes as wide as saucers, the teenager stood over the pit in wonder, peering into what looked, for all intents and purposes, to be an endless dark abyss. She couldn't see a thing within it, although Meredith didn't know if that was because it was already dark out or if this was a pit that reached all the way down to the center of the earth. She half-wondered if she should be seeing lights of all different colors inside, but couldn't remember why that would be relevant in the first place.

Nonetheless, Meredith was sure as hell not going to jump in and find out for sure – at least not until she came back when it was daylight again. She hoped, as she walked the edge of the pit, that she'd be able to find something at the very least when morning came for her troubles.

Meredith held her arms out on either side for balance as she made a full circle around the hole in the ground. Maybe it was a crudely-made mining tunnel, or an underpass meant for escaped convicts? She should have been frightened by the thought, if she cared enough to consider it for longer than a full circulation, but all thought and reasoning fled from her mind by the time she was midway around the crater.

She stopped; there was a body lying half-submerged in the creek not fifty feet away from where she sat on her haunches.

Meredith took a step forward, then another, and another, until the youngest Quill was close enough to kneel at the figure's side, hand raised instinctively to feel for his pulse before her mind could catch up to reason.

Her first petrified thought was that this was one of those boys that liked to trespass near the Quill's' property while riding their motorbikes due to the hillside being extra bumpy and great for showing off. If that had been the case, then the young man had likely been knocked unconscious, landed in the creek, and drowned without anyone finding him or helping him since the early morning.

She was making an educated guess since, while improbable, it had to be the thing closest explanation to the truth. People could totally drown in extremely cold, shallow waters… even if they were lying face up and at the end of a long, scorched landing that had left a ginormous crater in the middle of the forest, like this man was…

How else could he be blue?

Truth be told, Meredith Quill had never seen a drowned corpse with her own two eyes, but she came up short on finding another explanation. She entertained the idea, while hesitating to lay a hand on the body that she was sure was dead, that the man had been a blitzed daredevil, egged on to go riding while decked out in blue paint as for some symbolic reason that escaped her. The 'neighbor' boys had done stranger things, but this didn't look like of the boys she knew in her town.

Meredith leaned over the body of the man as she made to get a feel for his heartbeat. She had the impulse to touch his face as she hovered nearer, to feel if the blue pigment of his skin would smudge or crack beneath her fingers. The closer she got to his level, though, the less like paint it looked. She could see faint creases near his eyes and nose and see dark little bumps and pores, almost imperceptible. It was too much detail that would have otherwise been hidden beneath a cheap coat of paint. Not to mention the fact that he had cuts and bruises on his face that leaked a black substance that looked like oil, but couldn't have been.

Meredith breathed an audible sigh of relief as she felt the thrum of his pulse below his… (pointy?) ear. She pulled away, only hesitating to ogle with wonder at the person that was surely alive. He looked like a man, a young man – maybe in his mid-twenties, and yet there wasn't a hair on his bald, blue head – only a bizarre, reddish-orange crest of… shrapnel? Metal? sticking out from where it'd been embedded in his skull. Meredith had never seen anything like that before, and taking it into account was enough to convince her that this was no daredevil's brash stunt, but that she was at the site of a bona fide accident.

That, and the inexplicable crater next to him.

The teenager bit into her lower lip. She had no idea what to do next, as she had no personal medical training nor the muscle to even think about getting this stranger out of the woods. Meredith didn't even know who or what this person was, and the town hospital that could have provided her with some idea was miles down the road. It was practically the next city over!

Still, just leaving someone injured behind to look for help didn't make her feel any better.

Meredith considered her options as her eyes roamed up and down the man's clothes. Even those were incredibly strange. He wore a long trench coat, and beneath that was a worn tunic that looked more like a suit of armor despite the visible clothes beneath it. Everything, from his coat to his pants to his boots, were torn and ruined by his fall, and if she didn't know any better, Meredith presumed that there had been many more fascinating jingles and jangles hanging off his person before she'd found him.

Meredith's wandering gaze caught on the shiniest bobble of all, strapped to the stranger's thigh and only partially hidden by his coat. She stared, peeling back enough of the rough fabric to reveal not a gun or a knife, but a single arrow.

The arrow shone a gleaming, glimmering red in the vanishing light from between the boughs of the areas above. It reminded Meredith of when she'd first seen Dorothy's ruby slippers while watching The Wizard of Oz, inspiring just as much awe and wonder from her as the film had done then. Yet this was real, and if she could trust her eyes as well as her ears, the teenage girl was certain that the arrow not only glowed but that it was currently humming – pulsing with contained energy in its holster.

Quivering, like it was alive.

Meredith bent forward, mesmerized by the object as her fingers contracted on her lap and, before she knew it, she'd lifted her hand to inch closer until she could feel its power like heat radiating from a furnace.

The man's eyes snapped open.

Meredith leapt where she'd stooped, unable to keep from gasping as the man sat up and damn near flew at her while an enraged snarl tore from his throat. Her heart felt like a stone in her trembling chest as he roared at her with a mouthful of jagged teeth and, to her horrified shock, wild eyes that were as red as the arrow on his hip.

Meredith fell back, flinging her arms out to brace herself before she slammed into the ground. Her throat felt too dry and closed too tightly for her to scream, and yet she made a hurried effort to get as far away from the man – the creature, as possible. Frustrated tears sprung to her eyes when she couldn't get free of the errant vines that dug into her clothes and stabbed at her sensitive skin like barbed wires. Meredith whimpered, trying to throw off the largest brambles that mired her escape while shooting glances at the man opposite her.

But just as suddenly as he'd awoken, the man went stock still and his ruby irises rolled to the back of his head and he collapsed back, hitting the water with a resounding splash.

Meredith froze, her frantic attempts to dislodge herself coming to a halt amidst the creature's rise and fall. Her paralysis only lasted a moment, however, before she was free and running as fast as she could in the direction she'd come. She tripped and fell twice before she was sure of where she was going, and could see the wide gap that opened from whence she'd come.

The girl panted harshly, lungs well and truly burning now that she'd sprinted a quarter mile in a frenzy. The cold of night barely registered, but her flesh was covered in goosebumps and she could still feel the hot tears burning in her eye-sockets. She lurched forward, steadying herself against the trunk of a tree that was still standing. Meredith hugged the tree fiercely and waited the worst of her fear to subside. She saw the vague outline of her bike still lying on the dirt road ahead, and swallowed. The vague thought that she might've been chased ran through her mind, but she waved that away. Whatever she had found back there had been severely wounded, so much so that he'd surely been lying in a pool of his own black blood before it was watered down by the persistent current of creek water. Meredith would've bet all the money in her tip jar that he was going to die sooner rather than later, but that thought made her feel sick inside.

Meredith's thousand-yard stare ended when she moaned into her hands. She took a pause to catch her breath, then hastily turned tail and jogged back to where she'd run from, cursing herself. "You're an idiot, Meredith Quill!"

It felt like an eternity before she was standing in the same spot that she'd had a panic attack in. The man-shaped being was still lying on the dirt floor and, thankfully, still knocked out. Meredith, mindful of not falling into that still-present bottomless pit, maneuvered around until she was standing over his body. She rolled up her sleeves and, rather than psyche herself up for pulling what was likely a 200lb man-shaped being uphill, the girl grabbed ahold of the stranger as much as she could. Meredith heaved him across the forest floor, wincing as sticks snapped beneath his weight and bushes snagged at his limp arms and legs. She had to stop every few minutes to readjust her grip on the being, switching between hooking her hands beneath his underarms and propping him up humanely to just grabbing his arm and dragging him while his head scrapped against the ground.

"This would've been _sooo_ much easier if I had my own car." Meredith couldn't help whining once she'd made it out of the thickest part of the wood and was back on the road. Her dress was already sticking to her back with all the sweat she'd worked up, and she could feel the muscles in her arms and shoulders getting sore. The emerging stars above them provided very little light, but at least the night wasn't full of clouds to make navigating her way back home that much more difficult.

By the time she'd gone back for her bike, right after the stranger was settled in her family's barn-turned-toolshed behind her dad's busted convertible with a tarp beneath him, she internally praised herself for performing a miracle. Meredith was full-body aching and sweating all the way down to her loafers before she slipped in the front door of her house and closed it behind her with a quiet thud.

* * *

"Meredith?"

Mr. Quill's footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs before he was plodding into the kitchen from their living room.

"Here!" She called.

"When did you get home, Meri?" Her dad asked, in time to see Meredith kicking her shoes off and shoving them into their shabby wooden shoerack. His clear worry deepened the age lines on his forehead and around his mouth, and combined with the sound of shaken his voice.

Meredith cleared her throat, putting up a happy facade. "Not too long ago! Why? Did I worry you?"

Mr. Quill exhaled audibly, tension in his shoulders deflating. "As a matter of fact, you did."

He shuffled closer, eyes narrowing as he got a better look at her. "Good Lord, Meredith. What's all that oil on your dress, hun?"

Meredith looked down. There were dark, deep stains of black contrasting the pink sheen of her uniform that ran down from her chest to the fringes of her dress, and faded away past her visible knees. Marks of black blood had streaked Meredith's arms and the sleeves of her half-jacket, and had dribbled down to further blemish her shoes as well. She hadn't given a thought to her appearance in the middle of hauling a real-live almost dead person to their property, and it hit her like a ten-ton truck that she had prepared no alibi for why she looked like absolute hell.

"Oh, well that's…" Meredith's mind went blank for a moment. "I just – my bike got caught in a ditch on the way back!"

"Don't worry, Daddy. I got it out!" She reassured him after he sighed. "But it wasn't workin' right, and I forgot not to touch the chain when I was tryin' to fix it."

"Did you?"

Meredith rubbed an arm and grinned sheepishly. "It… might need a little more T.L.C…"

Her father shook his head, not buying her half-hearted assertions. His daughter's guilty look was, to him, a clear indication that she'd totaled her bike on the way over. "Guess we could always get you a new one."

"Daddy, there's no sense in getting a brand-new bike when I can repair the one I got!" Meredith crossed her arms over her chest, frowning. "It's just gonna take a little more time, a day maybe. Besides, I need to learn how to fix things on my own, for when I get my car."

Her Dad couldn't keep the smile from spreading across his face over her ludicrous declaration. "A bicycle and a car are two very different things, Meri."

"I know." She retorted. "But they're both… mobile. So, that has to count for something, right?"

Her daddy laughed. "You jus' don't want to pay for a new bike with your own money, do ya?"

Meredith folded her arms behind her back, feigning innocence while she rocked on the balls of her feet.

"Maybe."

* * *

The door of their home was never locked. It never needed to be, not when it was just Meredith and her father in the house that was literally out in the middle of nowhere-ville. She slipped out of the door when the coast was clear, after sparing her father a smile as he lay tucked up on their couch. He'd been knocked out after a few beers like clockwork, and was snoring in the wash of glowing white light from their television set.

Meredith marched up the hillside toward their sizeable toolshed in too-small Wellington boots and lamented the fact that their property was so damn hilly in the first place. Meredith imagined that all the willpower she'd inexplicably acquired was all due to the fascinating (and scary) being that she'd kept hidden for a good four or five hours. It hadn't been an easy feat, what with Meredith bouncing in her seat at the dining room table to tell her father of the discovery she'd made – that which had genuinely kept her out so late.

Luckily, she'd managed to keep her mouth shut during dinner and afterward. Something – or rather her knowledge as relative to her might consumption of fantasy television – told Meredith that telling her daddy, even if he was the one person she trusted most, would result in a whole heap of trouble. She'd already scared him enough early that night anyway, and so Meredith fixed it in her mind that if Mr. Quill needed to be told about the person she'd found in Gunn woods, she'd tell him when the timing felt right.

Meredith shifted the bundle of tattered towels and containers of leftover food in her arms so that she could shove the barnyard door aside. The flashlight she'd secured with her elbow came down and she grasped it in her free hand before flashing it at the reliably broken down Ford. She tiptoed around the car, dragging her boots on the sanded floor until she'd reach the area where she'd laid a tarp down.

Meredith's items nearly fell to the floor once she saw that the blue being was nowhere in sight. His tarp was bereft of everything, save for puddles of black in a few dips and crannies.

"Where'd you go?!" She turned anxiously every which way, until she'd swung herself in a full circle before a hacking sound from the far right had Meredith whirling to face that direction with the towels clutched tightly to her chest.

She squinted in the dark, but her eyes eventually landed on a now-familiar body in the corner farthest from her, obstructed by miscellaneous and abandoned woodworks and machinery. Drawing nearer, she saw enough of him to realize that he was leaning heavily against the side-entrance into their family's toolshed, with a smear of dark gore across the door behind him.

"Oh. There you are!" She tittered nervously. She'd completely forgotten that the barn/shed had an exit aside from the main doors. "Were you tryin' to… hide from me?"

Her guest remained silent. She couldn't see his blue face while he was shrouded in shadow, but his red eyes were glistening like ruby jewels in her direction. They looked no less hostile than when she'd first been scared by him, but she moved closer. She'd gotten this far, no real reason to chicken out now.

"I'm sorry I had to leave you here all alone. Must've been a fright, waking up hurt a-and… in a place you never been before."

Very much wanting to throw caution to the wind and get the stubborn… whatever he was back on the tarp where she could treat him, Meredith slid across the floor in her boots. She was practically gliding on the smooth surface of the barnyard floor until the blue man grunted loudly and she realized that he was ignoring her as he tried to stand up.

"Wait! Hold on!" Meredith began weaving around the toolshed, over forgotten tools and half-finished projects of wood and cinder and brass. She hissed as her knee bumped into the one of the Ford's headlights.

"You shouldn't move around so much." Meredith admonished, walking off the pain. She was right at his door, so to speak, only a few feet away. "You're gonna make those cuts deeper."

Meredith stilled upon hearing a noise like a high-pitched whistle.

Before she could blink, there was an arrow suspended in the air, right between her eyes. It was the very same arrow that she'd nearly laid her hands on in the woods, and Meredith went cross-eyed to get a look at how it pulsed with life while aimed in her direction.

In lieu of running, Meredith remained stationary. Her entire body began to tremble once again, but she attempted to keep grounded in the face of possible death.

She'd been right, the arrow was alive and here was the proof staring straight at her.

She also had to be a real idiot. "N-now, is that any way ta treat your rescuer?"

Meredith inhaled and exhaled shakily. There were no plausible thoughts going through her mind while their stand-off went on and on. Those eyes, red enough to scream evil, were blazing and boring holes into her figure for the longest time, until another full-body coughing fit wrenched them shut again.

The lack of concentration on the man's end was enough to let the arrow fall and clatter to the floor. He kept coughing, until he was wheezing and his strangely ridged head bounced against the wall violently.

The teen adjacent to him ignored the warning bells in her head for the third time that day and jumped to sit next to him. He couldn't shove her away in the middle of a fit, and Meredith took full advantage by wrapping a towel over his midsection. She could now see the wounds beneath his many shirts leaking all over the place.

Meredith sighed and shook her head. "What'd I tell you, huh? You made 'em worse."

The young woman startled as the blue man opened his mouth and barked unintelligible words at her face. His words were a garble to her ears, and didn't sound even remotely human, but mechanized. If she had to make a comparison to describe how it sounded, amid extreme duress, Meredith might've compared his speech pattern to a rewinding tape recorder.

Meredith grinned, starry-eyed, much to the man's confusion.

"I don't know what you're sayin'." Meredith declared. "But I like the way ya say it."


	4. (3) We Will Rock You

_A/N: Thank you for all the favorites and follows!_

* * *

"Boy, you sure eat fast." Meredith commented, dazed.

The blue man sat across from her, propped up in the same place where she had discovered him trying to make a getaway.

That had been two nights ago, but by now he had become comfortable in that spot and Meredith didn't begrudge him for that. She put herself in his shoes, and considered how she would feel if taken to a strange place she didn't recognize after a serious accident. It made sense for him to want easy access to the nearest exit, even if he couldn't, technically, run away all banged up like he was.

Meredith was glad that, at the very least, he had strength enough to eat. Her guest sat, munching on a sandwich that she'd made and snuck out with from the Quill's kitchen, between his two hands. She'd only just brought it over before the man was half-finished, taking vicious bite after bite out of it with his sharp, silvery teeth like a predator devouring fresh kill.

"Y-Yondu?" Meredith stumbled over the foreign name. "Are you done?"

Meredith didn't know how to get the question across to the stranger using only hand gestures, but she did her best by pointing at her mouth while pretend-chewing while repeating 'more?' a few times. Despite not having planned for a blue person who didn't know a lick of english to fall unconscious at her doorstep, the girl could've kicked herself for not knowing how to communicate with him properly.

She honestly wondered if she should've shown Bill's intended career path more interest before he'd left to become an English teacher. She had thought about giving her brother a phone call, but Meredith had ultimately scrapped the idea. She had decided that suddenly divesting interest in what Bill was learning would only complicate her current situation. Besides, she might've been paranoid but Meredith didn't trust that a call from her home or from a payphone might result in some unwanted attention.

It was better to make do with what she could, and improvise.

Blue acknowledged her with a glance, then grinned a feral grin filled with bits of bread and lettuce stuck in his maw at her as a reply. She almost winced with disgust but remembered that that would have been rude, especially since they were in a barn, and table manners were the least of their concerns.

Y-AWn-do didn't roll off the tongue, but Meredith could pronounce it crudely even without the fancy synthetic vocals. She couldn't help but prefer calling him 'Blue' in her mind, however. It was easier for her, and there was no harm done when the girl had a hunch that her guest, as impertinent as he was, had some choice nicknames of his own for her.

At least she'd had a good, delirious late-night laugh over the fact that Blue was such a fitting moniker as he'd come to her 'out of the blue'.

But whether it was due to delirium or because nothing else made as much sense, Meredith couldn't shake off the thought that she most likely had an alien hidden in her home. That, or an x-men. Meredith honestly preferred the former however.

She hadn't seen any flying saucers or UFOs in the vicinity, but Meredith already had a plan in store for when the week rolled around. She was going to make a quick trip back into Gunn Woods to see if that crater was hiding a spaceship of some sort. It was a better plan than trying to ask Blue, who was clearly intelligent, but who had only just mastered the words 'yes' and 'no'.

Among the torrent of jumbled thoughts flowing through her mind, Blue caught her attention when his hand shot down to the barn floor. He plucked a spider from the ground and raised it to eye level, scrutinizing it as it wriggled in his grasp by one leg. Meredith had to shake her head clear to remember that the man may have never seen an insect in his life and that that was the root of his fascination.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that." Meredith frowned at the bug. "There are all kinds'a critters up here, but that's jus' a harmless lil' recluse spider."

Blue observed the struggling creature as it dangled from his fingers, before his irises flicked in Meredith's direction. He then opened his mouth and started to lower the spider into his jaws. Meredith's eyes widened in horror.

"No, no! Don' eat 'im!" Meredith lunged forward, hands at the ready to rescue the poor little arachnid from its journey into Blue's esophagus.

* * *

Meredith walked up the stairs of the Quill household, breathing in the familiar scent of dust and lemony-scented polish that wafted off their old piano. She'd escaped the barn with a promise that she would return with more food, but she may as well have promised a brick wall the same thing. Blue had looked at her with disinterest as soon as she'd saved the spider's life by whacking him over the head in protest.

Hiding Blue was a cinch, overall. Meredith was less surprised that she'd gotten that far simply for the fact that her father didn't go up to his toolshed to work on things much anymore, not since his accident. Meredith also knew that neither he nor his friends needed a lot to become distracted if a game was on, and the NFL had kicked off recently. So, she was safe to hide her very own (possible) extraterrestrial within walking distance of the house, and to come out and feed him as well as replace his towels… until Sunday came and Meredith couldn't handle going in the barn without holding her breath.

Blue wasn't dying, Meredith was certain of that, but the smell of his blood was so pungent that the barn was beginning to smell like a dead animal carcass.

Oh, god, the smell. Even if her Daddy never entered the barnyard before his dying day, he'd surely notice the stench of Blue's blood once it polluted the air around their property like an overpowering haze.

The teenager paced back and forth in the upstairs hall, wondering where to start. Blue would need a shirt and pants to start with, but at the risk of embarrassing herself further, Meredith nixed the idea of going through her brothers' things to find a spare set of underwear. Her friend would just have to go commando and deal with it until they could figure out something else.

Meredith stopped in front of Bill's door. If the most educated Quill couldn't give her advice, then his absence would have to provide her with a charitable donation of his own clothes.

Perusing through her brother's bureaus, Meredith compared the various old clothes that Bill had left behind before college. Blue had a build that was, by her estimate, somewhat bulkier than Curtis's anyway. Meredith held up one of Bill's sweaters to the sidelong mirror. It was an ugly old thing that Regina had given to him a few Christmases ago, and looking at it now, Meredith didn't blame him for leaving it behind before he'd gone off to become a teacher. The maroon, diamond-patterned sweater looked like something Jerry Lewis might wear as a dorky professor.

Meredith sighed as she felt the material. It may have been a sore sight, but it was a thick and wooly, and Blue clearly wore a great many layers, for whatever reason. The sweater dwarfed the teenager as she held it in front of her, but she was unsure of whether it would be hang off her new friend or be too snug on him.

Of course, there was only one way to find out.

* * *

The next stop before returning to the shed was to retrieve gauze from their downstairs bathroom. Her father was asleep, prompting Meredith to tip-toe down their rickety stairs and quietly raid their home for more suitable materials. The towels that she had been using were completely soaked through by now, and useless if the stench of black blood continued to hang off them.

Meredith swiped the emergency kit from their supply cupboard and hurried out. Her mind was already turning over the possibilities of getting the bandages directly over Blue's wounds.

She held her breath upon returning, and saw the hopefully-an-alien was in the same place she'd left him, picking at his nails against the wall. His healing factor had to be incredibly strong, especially without proper treatment, if he could sit up after suffering such extreme blood loss over a single weekend. The Quills had a variety of small tubes of disinfectant, cotton swabs, a whole lotta gauze, and some band aids, but there was no replacement for morphine or IVs. And yet, he was idly waiting on her now as if this were just another day.

"I got you somethin' new to change into, to make you more comfortable." Meredith explained politely, and excessively once she was within speaking distance. "Now, I know these are ugly, but it gets cold out here in the fall. We got lots a shade and this barn is full a' cracks, holes, gaps, you name it."

Blue looked at her armful apathetically, without indication as to whether he understood her or not.

"Can you stand?" Meredith worried. Immediately, she pointed to herself while sitting down and standing up again, clothes still in hand.

The teen was about to give it a second go when Blue lifted an arm and stretched it over the wall beside him. He was already shaking, but while using his back for more support, Blue slowly rose with a concentrated effort at his side.

Meredith kept her hands open and at the ready in case he collapsed, but she waited from a respectful distance as he made his way into a standing position. Blue couldn't stand to his full height, stooping slightly with bended knees and body curled inward to keep his clothing from shifting against what Meredith surmised were the still painful wounds beneath.

She wasted no time unfolding Bill's clothing and handing them out to the man. He had to recognize what she wanted him to do. Blue snatched the clothes out of her hand with a grunt before he looked at her pointedly.

"Oh!" Meredith smiled meekly before she spun around to give him privacy. She walked around the Ford as the sound of Blue shuffling to get his clothes off faded into the background.

Quill eyed the far wall, where many of her daddy's soldering tools were kept along with hammers and a jack in the corner. There was old, weak lumber against the wall next to the Ford as well, abandoned just like the half-finished shelves and the makings of a new grandfather clock to replace the old. Meredith couldn't remember why he'd needed so much lumber in the first place, but looking at what had once been Greg Quill's workshop, she couldn't help feel a trifle sad.

She turned away. "Are you done dressin' yet or –"

Meredith and Yondu made eye contact before Meredith's gaze fell on his abdomen, which was still bare and very, very blue. There several burns and semi-deep tears across his chest, his shoulders, and stomach and one horizontal seam running over his midsection. The tissue was healing over for the most part, creating lighter blue and almost white markings to overlay the damage from his crash. It wasn't as gory as she'd feared it would be, as there was only minor bleeding from the deepest cuts, but Meredith's mind was lagging.

Her gaze grazed over the visible muscle and stopped on one clear bicep that had flexed, perhaps with Blue's surprise. She stared at him long enough to forget reality for a split-second, and nearly balked at her own reaction. The girl's legs locked at the snake of warmth that materialized below her navel and involuntarily curled down to her pelvis. It was only a moment, and it passed by as quickly as it came, but Meredith felt lingering hotness on her skin.

"Um," She rubbed her arm, mortified. "The gauze! We should wrap that around you to be safe before you got a shirt on!"

The tension in the toolshed didn't lessen as Meredith fiddled around with the kit she'd smuggled up, not even when she approached Blue with it. The teenager hadn't invaded her guest's personal space since the first night she'd wrapped him up, but he'd been fully dressed and in a whirlwind of pain then. He'd had no choice.

But before she could blink, Meredith gasped when his hand lurched forward when she had sidled up to his chest and wrapped around her wrist, squeezing her arm painfully.

"Stop that!" Meredith snapped against his glare. "You need all them wounds binded to keep 'em from getting worse!"

Meredith shook the gauze insistently when he didn't budge but kept her there, holding her at arm's length. "Why're you fightin' me when all I'm tryin' to do is help you?"

Blue continued to glower at her, and even shook his head 'no' at her attempts to come near him while he wasn't fully clothed or armed with his long coat and the weapons that were most likely hiding in there.

Meredith, unable to withstand the tension for long, sighed. "Here."

She pressed the roll into Yondu's hand. "You put one end on, and I'll wrap it around you. Won't have ta touch you that way, okay?"

She held the gauze between their hands once Blue had let her wrist go, and mimed him putting it on himself. After showing the man how to unwrap it, Meredith handed him an end and pointed to just below his armpit, indicating where he should put the sticky part on.

The girl ran around him in circles until all the gauze ran out and his abdomen was sufficiently covered in three layers. The air about them had not been cleared of mutual annoyance, or of the smell of Yondu's blood. Yet, when the man tugged on Bill's sweater, it was incredibly hard for Meredith to not snort with laughter at how ridiculous he looked, even more so with his default grumpy expression.

* * *

Growing up in a household with three other siblings, all of whom were different in their own little ways, fights and spats were bound to happen. When Regina and Meredith were living beneath the same roof, there had been a fight every other night. Being younger and the less rebellious of the two by a mile, Meredith could never sit with the pain of making Regina hate her a little bit more than she already did.

It was always Meri that ended up trying to make it up to her older sister with whatever she could, be it letting Regina borrow some of her allowance or covering her when she was out too late. The best appeasement, however, came from when she and Regina could just listen to their father's turntable in silence. The latter didn't happen as often, but they were the few times when both sisters forgot everything including the margin in their respective ages and got along.

After the earlier incident of dressing Blue's wounds, Meredith left the barn for dinner while feeling incredibly guilty for pushing his boundaries. It wasn't a far cry from how she'd felt at the end of every fight with Regina, or those few with Curtis or with Bill.

So, to make up for it, Meredith came up with the perfect idea.

Later that night, Meredith entered the barn and squealed. "It's been so long since I've shown anybody my music!"

She set the turntable down gently, then let her amassed record collection slide from her arms and onto the floor between them. Blue stared at the flood of strange, square covers with dismay, inching backward to escape being touched by her beloved records like they were made of lava.

"Look! This one's brand new, just got it a week ago!" Meredith held one of the covers up to give Blue a better look at it. She felt an echo of the jitters she'd gotten when she'd bought a record by the Sex Pistols.

At eighteen, she was legally an adult and yet it still felt kind of naughty buying it for the title alone – and the mostly-an-adult could also hear the same snotty voice that sounded like Regina's complaining about how immature Meredith was.

"The radio is one thing, but I can listen to these whenever I want to without commercial breaks." Meredith grinned. "You wanna listen?"

Meredith riffled through her collection, sweeping back what amounted to 30 different records while she rattled off about them.

"Hm, we could listen to Sex Pistols, but that's kinda... it's an acquired taste. Maybe The Beatles? They're important for your musical education, but I need a break from them before I go and do a fool thing like start hatin' 'em. What about Pink Floyd?"

Meredith bit her lower lip, for once not even mindful to Yondu's increasingly perturbed looks in her direction. "Oh, wait! Hold on!"

At the bottom of her pile lay a record from Queen. Most everyone on Earth liked Queen, or everyone that Meredith had ever met at least, so why wouldn't an alien from outer space?

She slid the turntable closer, letting it come to a rest between the two of them, before placing the record on the center spindle and let the record roll.

Blue's facial expression remained sour. He appeared like he might keel over from boredom as he stared at Meredith with those glazed-over red eyes of his. It wasn't long before Meredith found his stubbornness irksome. Who could listen to these songs and not fall in love – quick or slow, one song or all, music as good as this was bound to touch your heart and stick with you. That was Meredith's philosophy, anyway.

It was last straw by the time he rolled his eyes and sighed sharply at her turntable and the melody it reverberated.

"Now, don' you start that huffin' and puffin'!" Meredith got bold (well, bolder) and pointed a finger directly in the stick-in-the-mud's face. She gave him a bright smile to let him know that she wasn't all that furious at him, but annoyed and playful. "You can scorn everythin' that me an' mine own, but don't you dare disrespect the music!"

"This is as good as it gets!"

Blue looked at her finger cross-eyed, an expression that imitated the one Meredith had made when he'd literally threatened her with his primary weapon. Eventually, he snorted and pushed her hand down, away from his newly smiling face. It wasn't a smile without that patronizing edge, but Meredith noted how it reached his red eyes.

She tilted her head back and forth to the song as Yondu shifted further away from her. He eventually leaned back against the wall to rest his eyes, seemingly ignoring Meredith and her music as opposed to starting up another one-sided argument.

And yet, she caught him waving his foot through the air to the beat by the time the record was over.

"Not bad even to a sourpuss, huh?" Meredith smirked, before flipping the record.

* * *

 _A/N: Please R &R if you can!_


	5. (4) Magic

_A/N: This isn't the end._

* * *

Life was funny, sometimes.

There wasn't an exorbitant amount of time that she could spend thinking on where she'd ended up. Meredith's long weekend phased into a week, and then that went by without incident. And yet, not without the teenage girl fretting all the while.

The youngest Quill never claimed to be a cleverest or most thoughtful of her family, not by a longshot. But Meredith hadn't forgotten herself as thoroughly as a complete moron might've. The Monday following her unbelievable weekend, Quill had gone straight into the woods behind her home and confirmed that the gaping hole in the ground in Gunn Wood was still there, just as she'd left it.

Upon examining the hole in the ground with better lighting, Meredith could finally confirm that some unidentifiable object, round and bearing shattered glass and shorn-up metal intermixed with the soil, had burrowed within the Earth there, deeply. The water from the creek was very slowly filling it up, and only been deterred from flooding the enormous crater because the water had gone down into what was likely an escape pod or spaceship of some sort. It was not, in any way, shape, or form, a car or a motorbike lying down there.

Her curiosity was, of course, not even remotely sated by the discovery, but without a detailed explanation from her new companion, and without anyone to speculate with that wouldn't blow it all out of proportion, Meredith put the crater at the back of her mind and carried on.

Not even in her wildest dreams would Meredith Quill anticipated that, if she did encounter extraterrestrial life or anything as remotely as insane, she could be able to get as far as hiding them for an extended period. Somehow, however, this strange occurrence was fast becoming just another part of her life. And while that was what she wanted, at least as opposed to having her brazen friend be discovered and carted off to God knows where, Meredith would occasionally feel goosebumps on her skin in the middle of night.

There were many moments, specifically when she left the barnyard to try and salvage some sleep before work, where she was prompted to stop in her tracks. The cool night air and the bright stars above her were consistent, but Meredith could never quite shake the feeling that she was being watched.

Playing it off did little good, even if Meredith kept to the standard routine that had been her life for nearly two years, with none the wiser, including her father. It wasn't outside of the realm of possibility that someone out there was watching her. There was proof enough that stranger things had happened to the girl in her own backyard.

* * *

Meredith was tempted to just keep her turntable in the toolshed with Blue, but she'd decided against it after realizing that she didn't trust the man not to pull something with it, whether he did so jokingly or not. It wasn't that much of a hassle to lug her music up and down to begin with, or to set it up reverently on one of the underused tables in the toolshed and let it play during her visits with the blue man, like it was doing now.

"Oh come on! Give it a try!"

Meredith switched from sitting while positioned with her legs crisscrossed beneath her to resting on her calves. There was a fluffy comforter draped over her shoulders, and a quilt below that she'd made two trips back and forth just to bring. Meredith had invited Blue to sit on it with her with a genial pat over the soft fabric, but Yondu had declined with a curled lip and an amused look in his eyes.

Oh well, it was his loss.

"So you talk," Meri mimed speaking for Blue's benefit, opening and closing her mouth as she gestured outward with her hand. "And you say whatever, then I'll show you what's next."

The had-to-be-an-alien smirked, and leaned into the side of the device where she'd indicated he speak into. They hadn't progressed as far as having full-sentence conversations in English, but Meredith was pleased that Blue picked up words and their meanings at an exponential rate.

"Stupid." He rasped in his 'English-speaking' voice, as Meredith had dubbed it. She hadn't expected Blue to have a tenor when he spoke civilly, but it didn't sound half-bad to her ears.

Even if some of those words he said in that gruff voice were unsavory, at best.

"It's not stupid!" Meredith blustered with a pout. She was slouched where she sat on the toolshed floor. "Well, I mean, maybe it is… but we should still try it!"

Blue rolled his eyes, exhaling through his nose at her stubborn insistence. Such an expression was becoming a common occurrence from her alien friend, as her prompting him to do anything was apparently a chore no matter what that thing was. Meredith might've held more sympathy for Blue had he still been excessively injured and not up to doing anything. But the bastard was just on the cusp of being totally healed, if the barely stained gauze and the scabbed over upper body was anything to go by.

He could also stand up straight, and had proven that he could on several occasions to walk around what was, admittedly, a very cluttered, dirty space. No matter what, it was like he never expected Meredith to come waltzing through the barnyard doors whenever he was up and about with hardly a limping gait.

"And **nooooo** English! Talk like you would normally, or it ain't gonna work!"

The girl flipped her hair back as she leaned far enough to be a shoulder-length away from the alien man. The tape recorder waved just below Blue's nose, making it twitch to avoid bumping against the primitive little thing.

Meredith couldn't help but giggle. She appreciated it best when Blue's expressions varied, when he wasn't just staring at everything she did or said with a bland look but reacted with genuine emotion. It wasn't as often as she would've liked, but Meredith felt what was surely liquid pride in her veins whenever he smiled at her patronizingly or showed characteristic distaste for her decisions. Anything was better than him acting like he was some stoic, hoity-toity emperor when she could sense that he definitely wasn't that.

She exaggerated a pout. "Come on, man. I saved your life! The least you could is help me test this."

Meredith was directly in line with Blue's eyes. His fiery eyes were no longer that daunting or scary after the first few days.

While they weren't comforting either, Meredith relied on pinpointing him in the dim lighting by their uncanny, catlike glow every night. Being almost nose to nose with him made it that much easier to see the raw intelligence within, and Meredith – despite knowing that her attempts to have real conversations with him were silly – very much wanted to know everything he had hidden behind those eyes.

Finally, Blue groaned melodramatically before he replied with a curt, garble of words. Meredith gasped, quickly pressing the 'record' button as he whirred at her, but her reflexes weren't fast enough to catch every sound he'd made.

"Wait! Hold on! You didn't even wait for me!" Meredith smacked, or more fittingly tapped, his shoulder whilst fiddling with the recording device to rewind it. "You –!"

The ear-piercing creak of the Quill's household door swinging open sounded just outside. The two turned their heads to the noise instantaneously, and went completely silent.

Nevertheless, the girl stayed on the ground, nearly pressed against Blue subconsciously before she heard the surefire sound of footfalls on the gravel outside. The approaching sound made Meredith's heart hammer in her chest.

"Shit!" Meredith swore. Shooting up from the floor with panic written all over her face, the teen pulled away from Blue to hastily lift the stylus from her record, almost tripping over the old quilt that she'd brought up with her to sit on while visiting her guest.

 _'Long as it's you the love I'm with then_

 _I'll keep on calling you sweetheart –'_

The sound of the Bee Gees, which had permeated the barn since the sun had gone down hours ago, stopped abruptly. Meredith held her hands up, placing them on either side of her temples, as she tried to think quickly over what to do. She knew that her father was getting closer and closer with each moment wasted.

Meredith looked back at Blue, who looked like he was getting ready to stand with her, although he was hesitant at her wide-eyed expression. She held her hands out in 'stop' motion.

"Stay… Just stay here, alrigh'?" Meredith entreated the man, face twisted as she looked at him helplessly. Blue stared back, but slowly leaned against the barnyard wall once more. He caught sight of Meredith's grateful smile before her hair went flying as she turned to jog out the door.

"I'll be right back. Kay?" Meredith mimed for him to remain seated again, for extra measure.

Yondu glared when he was shrouded in darkness once more, and when he heard the bolt on the door scrap by before it locked him in. He nudged the turntable with his foot, kicking it half-heartedly to make it slide away from his presence with Meredith's absence.

A crackle of static caught the Centaurian's attention. He looked down, already reaching into the long-coat that he'd resumed wearing over Meredith's ridiculous gift that she referred to as a 'sweater'.

* * *

Meredith stood with her back against the barn door and took time to breath shallowly, and watch as her breath billowed out into the night air like smoke from a dragon's jaws.

It was blisteringly cold outside, the coldest night yet Meredith reckoned, but the hair on Meredith's paled arms rose at the telltale signal of her father's bulky flashlight. It's pointed light zipped around, this way and that, in the dark as Meredith treaded down the gently sloping hillside, fists knocking at her side.

The thought that she should be coming up with an excuse for why she was out in the dark past midnight, with only her cotton pajamas on, running through her mind repeatedly. She couldn't get past the mantra no matter how she urged herself to. It was as if she were being affronted by a mental blockade that kept her from any degree of proactivity when she needed it most.

Gregory Quill appeared from behind the house, just in time to shine his flashlight directly in Meredith's face.

"Ow." She yelped, squinting in the dead-on light when her father stood still.

"Meredith?" He asked, lowering the light just enough to allow his daughter the gift of sight again.

Greg Quill breathed an audible sigh of relief at having found his daughter. His teeth then began to chatter, and he ambled to rub both hands together, shifting the flashlight to beneath his arm. "Damn, it's cold. Meredith, what the hell are you doin' out here at One in the goddamn morning?"

His daughter began to speak, but Mr. Quill's ire interrupted any attempt at a feeble excuse.

"I've been looking for you all over! I kept callin' ya and callin' ya but you never answered." Her father's face was inscrutable in the dark, but Meredith could hear his accent thickening the angrier he became. "An' then I went upstairs to check on you, and I couldn't find ya!"

"Do you know how worried I was?!"

"I'm – I'm sorry." She apologized softly, audacity dwarfed beneath her father's genuine frustration. She may have been an adult, but Meredith still felt cowed little a little child by the tumultuous downgrade in her only parent's mood.

He approached her purposefully, mind already set before she could try and justify herself by uttering another syllable. "Meri, I want you to stay in the house after dark from now on."

Meredith squeaked crossly. "What? But… but it's been getting darker earlier and earlier lately. Won't be long 'til the sun goes down at 5 o'clock!"

"I don't care." He said firmly. "When you get home from work, I expect you to be inside our house. Especially when it's this cold outside. You ain't even properly dressed for runnin' around in the woods like a hooligan!"

"I wasn't runnin' around!" Meredith retorted, against her better judgement. She was in for it now, she knew, but the girl kept going. "I was just spendin' time in the shed, listening to my records! Because I know you hate me listenin' to 'em when you go to bed."

Meredith fidgeted beneath her father's partially visible gaze. Greg was never a man to bluster or explode with his temper, which was mild to begin with. Sure enough, his stance relaxed enough to make breathing easier for Meredith.

"Let's go inside, hun." He sighed. "We can talk about this more in the morning."

"Okay… Oh! Wait! Daddy…" Meredith bit her lower lip, wishing her brain would come up with something quickly, anything as a last resort. She bit her lip so hard it broke the tender skin and the sting made her blanch with the cold.

Her father grumbled, growing tired. "What now?"

"Can I… can I just go back and get my records?" She warbled.

With his grudging permission, Meredith left her waiting father to race back up to the barn door. She unlatched it and slipped inside so as not to let Greg see their bizarre guest, in case Blue had directly disobeyed her and was walking around in plain view or was eavesdropping.

Meredith moved to the side entrance, but stopped just before her slippered feet contacted the swirled quilt that she'd had to leave behind in her previous haste.

"Blu – Yondu?" She called.

The barn was completely empty.

Well, not completely empty; her father's broken-down Ford was still in plain sight, as was the pile of old lumber and the many tools hanging against the wall.

But there was no tarp, no heap of shredded and unusual armor, and most astounding of all – there was no blue alien against the side-door of the toolshed. All traces of her alien were had been stolen away, as if he'd never been there to begin with.

The teenage girl, while bewildered, looked everywhere that she could with the minimal time she had – behind the desk and beneath it, under the Ford and back behind it, near the lumbar and within cupboards at level with the floor. She called for him, urgently, but received nothing in return to identify him among any of the-the junk that closed in wherever she turned.

The image of the barnyard grew fuzzy when Meredith's eyes filled with frustrated tears.

Soon, her daddy's voice was barely muted by the barn door. "Meredith? Come on!"

* * *

"Go to bed now, kid." Greg commanded her, once the door had shut behind them with a loud bang. Her father placed the flashlight on the coffee table while Meredith barely acknowledged him when he bid her goodnight. She made a beeline for the stairs and walked up to her room in dejected silence instead, not in the mood to appease him any further.

The girl's head hung down while she wiped at her eyes roughly. She turned the handle on her door and opened it easily, having left all her records and turntable downstairs in the aftermath. Her moment of panic had ended when Meredith felt herself begin to crash from all the stress that had plagued her, for far longer than that night. The exhaustion she felt was heavy, so heavy that she could feel her eyelids weighed down by the crushing wave. By the time she was back in her room, Meredith was barely conscious enough to close the door, let alone worry about where Blue had gone.

She stirred long enough to ready herself for bed, not bothering to shirk off her slippers, when a hand flew around her mouth. A scream died in her throat a being made of pure shadow loomed in front of her.

His red eyes shined in the dark.

"How did you know which room was mine?!" Was the first thing Meredith could think to ask when his hand left her mouth. Blue didn't answer (as if she expected him to) as he dragged her across the floor, from one end of her bedroom to the other.

"And – Hey! That's my dad's flashlight!" Meredith was shoved aside while Yondu pulled out one of her bedroom drawers/vanity. "He just had it, just now!"

She gasped. "Did you steal it? Did he see you?"

Blue paid her little mind until he'd picked one of Meredith's sweaters from out of her drawer and threw it at her face, practically knocking the unprepared teenager backward.

"What the hell?" Meredith snatched the sweater from off her face and glared at Blue. His brows, or lack thereof, rose before he mimed for her to put it on. To add insult to injury, he clicked the flashlight on and off in her face until Meredith slipped the garment over her head.

"Don't you dare. Throw **that**. At **me**." Meredith said between gritted teeth. Her glower worsened when Blue rolled his eyes, but he tucked the bulky flashlight under his armpit and reached forward to grab her.

* * *

Meredith walked with Blue, arm in arm after she'd resisted him tugging her everywhere by her wrist or continued to sling her around like a bag of oats. The man had hoisted her over his shoulder and Quill had been whisked out of her bedroom window and down the gutters before she was properly warned or could protest. The motion sickness that that event caused had been quite enough for one night, and Meredith had told Yondu so, in-between threatening to throw up on his jacket.

For an instant, the young woman was reminded of The Wizard of Oz yet again, while they reached the end of her road and took a right. They were fast-walking in the direction of the town, down nearer to the edge of the woods where she'd first encountered Blue, but it was unclear if they were going back to that site or elsewise.

"Do y'all have a death wish?!" Meredith protested, trying to maintain her balance as they descended at a brisk pace. "Ya know that we don't just live totally alone up here. Anybody could be comin' up this road at any time!"

"Even if nobody comes up 'ere, my daddy is already all frazzled. If he finds me outta the house in the middle of the night again, we're both gonna be in a heap a' trouble!"

Blue's strides quickened, to show that he'd heard her, but he was otherwise silent. Meredith bounded alongside him before long, leaping every step of the way to keep up. "Where're you takin' me?!"

She groaned angrily, but the mouth of the woods where Yondu's pod-like ship had crashed was edging nearer before them. It didn't make the situation any clearer for her. If Blue needed her to show him the way back to his crash site, wouldn't he have tried to get her to explain and direct him?

They stumbled along, plowing through the trees and her confusion with ample haste. Meredith, at one point, nearly fell flat on her face before Blue caught her and lifted her back on her feet. It was a moment of respite, in which the blue stranger seemed to hesitate before forging onward again.

They were headed right for the crash site – making this her third visit to this specific spot, when a yawning or buzzing or – or something loud and purring invaded the countryside quiet just ahead of them.

Meredith slapped her hands over her ears. "What is that?"

In answer, Blue looked up as the canopy of leaves above them shuddered violently like they were being shaken by a storm. Meredith copied his actions, unsure if the light of the moon was somehow getting brighter above the trees or if the inexplicable wind was straight tearing all the leaves from their branches.

Meredith screamed when the entire canopy ripped away all at once, making way for an object that was larger than life to shine down on them both.

She recovered not a minute later, gasping when she realized what it was that was landing right in front of them.

" _It's beautiful_."

Blue ripped his arm away from hers before the ship had fully landed, and walked forward calmly while Meredith was left behind. She didn't follow at first, too awestruck at the incredible sight that filled her entire field of vision long after it had touched down.

It wasn't a flying saucer like you saw in corny black-and-white movies, but this ship had fins that cut straight through the trunks of the trees like the sharpest razors. It wasn't the same as the pod that Blue had crashed in in the first place, but it was all gussied up to look like a proper metal bird, sleeker and shapelier than a clunky old airplane or helicopter. The light it emitted from beneath, to safeguard an apt landing, touched everywhere in sight and made Meredith's eyes stream with tears when she stared at it for too long.

When she did gather enough courage and sense to follow Blue, Meredith had to stop once more as a ramp lowered from beneath the star-bird, and watch while new creatures came marching down to stand in front of her friend.

Imposing men fanned out behind Yondu's retreating form. They stood before the man in formation like army soldiers before a sergeant with their shoulders set and bulbous guns with ammo over their chests.

Meredith's eyes raked over all four of them as she tried to commit them to memory, putting descriptions before a lack of names for them (although with a bit of time, she was certain that she could come up with the best of nicknames). The tallest at one end of the line had ebony skin and was as bald as Yondu with protruding sabers for teeth, and the man beside him had silver locks twisted down his sallow cheeks and dark, caterpillar-like eyebrows. On the other side, a portlier man who looked extraordinarily human gave her a foul expression through beady, black eyes, and Meredith resisted the urge to shiver. Beside him was a rail-thin man, who might've looked like he was in the same species as the meaner guy, had there not been shifty, metallic object in place of one of his eyes.

Yondu began to bark at them, well-nigh yelling in that language she couldn't possibly replicate no matter how hard she tried. She listened fixedly regardless, head tilting when he finished with a particularly loud growl and the four… subordinates? Pounded their chests in unison, in some sort of salute with a meaning that escaped her.

Quill's attention darted to one alien then another as they scrambled to move in opposing directions. One man was returning into the spaceship, and another was striding behind it, and the remaining two (sabretooth and silver minnow) followed Yondu as he returned to her. He looked almost taller with his shoulders set and back straightened to bring him to his full height when he halted in front of her. Meredith's attention snapped back, and she looked at him in earnest, worrying internally if standing like that was hurting him.

The man that she'd been hiding for damn near two weeks clapped a hand on her shoulder, and stared into her eyes intently.

Then he opened his mouth, sharp, shark-like teeth bared in a shit-eating grin.

"Thank ya kindly for all yer help, _sweetheart_." Blue – Yondu – spoke to her in perfect English.

Yondu's gaze traveled over her and her astonished expression. He reveled in Meredith's shock, not at all attempting to contain his laughter as her mouth hung open in shock.

With a final, peculiarly temperate squeeze of her shoulder, the former stowaway left her to saunter toward the enormous, bird-shaped spaceship. Silver and Sabretooth afforded her a few curious glances before they followed suit, headed toward the gradually rising ramp of the ship.

She wasn't unable to process that what was happening was actually happening until she could hear the air around her being suctioned off.

The bright headlights and under lights of the ship resumed, once again blinding Meredith whom was still directly facing the ship. She caught brief glimpses of the spacecraft beginning to float effortlessly from off the uneven terrain, aided by propulsions she couldn't see but were still tangible. The teenager dug the heels of her feet into the ground to keep from being pulled forward while the ship rose. Meredith felt like it was drawing her in before takeoff like a magnet – like a tractor beam.

She was not, in fact, beamed up into the ship. The last thing Meredith could see before the intensity of the ship's light forced her eyes shut completely was the recognizable outline of Yondu himself. He was visibly sitting behind the rotund, clear-glass window of the cockpit until his ship had risen far enough into the air to take off into the atmosphere with deep, earth-shaking boom.

When she heard the chiming trickle of the creek once more, and the living hum from Yondu's ship no longer deafened nor blinded her, Meredith opened her face.

The human woman felt small as she marveled at where she'd just seen a real, live spacecraft with her own two eyes. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but one that stole her breath away and made her eyes sparkle as she basked in the penultimate revelation that Earth was not the only planet in the universe that held sentient life. No one else in the world could have experienced what she'd just –

Meredith hesitated in her awed introspection to look at her surroundings, taking in the near pitch-blackness and the thorny underbrush that surrounded her. Her face fell as she looked above with an almighty glare and a shuddering frame. The majesty of the last few minutes had disappeared as abruptly as the life of a mayfly when Meri realized that she was all alone.

"Thanks for just leavin' me here!" Meredith jumped up with her hands cupped around her mouth to project her voice into the air, feeling the cold seep into her bones as the heat of the spaceship faded away.

She stomped on the frosted-over ground below and screamed uselessly through the parted trees and to the apathetic sky overhead. "You're welcome for the whole saving your life thing, by the way!"

" **Jackass!** "

* * *

A/N: I appreciate all the follows and favs! Please R&R whenever you have time.

Oh! And I enjoy hearing your questions as well!


	6. Telephone Line (Interlude)

_A/N: I apologize for the long absence, but I am super glad with the favs and reviews and follows, as always! Enjoy!_

* * *

 _Missouri, Earth_

 _1980_

Meredith and Peter were the first downstairs, since the crack of dawn after the baby had declared, by way of crying without reason, that it was time for the day to start.

"I write the songs that make the whole world sing" Meredith cupped the back of Peter's head and guided him ever so gently toward the water faucet. "I write the songs; I write the songs…"

She tipped him down carefully, watching his button nose wiggle while the suds in his fuzz of hair washed off, and tried to soothe him with her voice before his fussing turned to outright panic. Water didn't hurt Peter none, thank goodness, but he wasn't that fond of it either, no matter how his mother tried to ease him into a bath or even a quick wash of his face.

"Mmmm – ma!" Head supported, Peter leaned back and splashed some with restless arms, batting at the water that climbed up past his legs. Meredith chuckled as he continued, making random noises as if to try and join in with her and Barry Manilow. "Mmmmmm!"

"Very good, baby!" Meredith fawned, bending down to kiss Peter's forehead. "Barry eat your heart out, huh?"

She hummed with the radio before long while his chubby, lilac cheeks and letting the beatific melody work its magic on her infant son, who naturally liked to listen to music almost as much as Meredith herself did.

 _'My home lies deep within you_

 _And I've got my own place in your soul_

 _Now, when I look out through your eyes'_

Peter cried out suddenly, moving a tiny purple fist to rub at his face where a smidge of soap had gotten into his eyes despite Meredith's best efforts.

"Oh, oh, oh! I know, angel. I know. Hold on." Meredith cooed. She very quickly grabbed an ultra-soft washcloth and wet it, then barely brushed it around Peter's squinting eyes. "Mommy's so sorry."

"Is he doin' okay?"

Meredith glanced over her shoulder amid helping Peter, finding it difficult to not gush over how her baby grunted and latched onto her hands even after the offending soapsuds were wiped clean. The young woman saw Curtis standing behind her, propped up and gripping the back of one of their dining room chairs. His face hadn't been too touched by time yet, but he looked like a worn basket-case with his bleach-white knuckles over the chair's helm.

She smiled, beginning to towel off her child and let him have his way as Peter attempted to jump to get out from where he sat in the sink. He raised his chubby arms out to her and smiled gummily when Meredith playfully tossed a fluffy hand-towel over his head. Lifting the boy up, the mother let the sink drain and giggled as Peter bounced and squirmed in her hold while she toweled along his tiny body and through his already thick tousle of hair.

It wasn't an unpleasant surprise to see Peter sporting a full head of hair not three months after his birth. Her own soft reddish waves had been passed down to the baby, and had grown to cover much of Peter's scalp. But it didn't take much looking to spot the sliver of red gleaming within like a treasure buried in sand.

Meredith bundled him up and continued to dry the baby's legs before facing Curtis. "He's right as rain and happy as a clam! Did you wanna hold him to see and make sure?"

Curtis sputtered like a flustered teenager. "Wouldn't he be happier with you?"

"Curt. He's only a little baby." Meredith eyebrows rose, impassively. "Peter should get to know all his family, including you. Don't be such a wuss."

"A wuss? What are we, Meri? Twelve?" Curtis scoffed. He looked uneasy as he took his hand off chair and wiped the waxy polish from it off on his khaki-ed hip.

Meredith stuck out her lower lip, and switched into the voice she'd reserved for Peter.

"Come on, Curt-y. Does dis angel wook wike a fret to you?" She held Peter out so that Curtis caught his eye, and the infant boy instantly smiled at his uncle. "Don' be a monster and upset the angel, Curt-y. Come on."

Curtis sighed with defeat.

"Hand him over."

Meredith grinned and did just that. She carefully placed Peter in Curtis's arms as one might transfer a glass vase through an art exhibit and pulled a chair out for them both to sit down in. She practically flounced into the seat next to them, eyes bright and hair flying over her shoulders. Nineteen-year-old Meredith might've rolled her eyes at how melodramatic this all was, how performative and silly that Meri would get excited about getting to spend time with Curtis, of all people. She'd always loved her brothers, but out of the two, Curtis was the least interesting and fun to talk to, being as prone to bringing up politics into every single discussion they ever had since before he was married.

Even so, the current Meredith couldn't help herself. She'd been overcome with missing her immediate family like crazy the past few months, which had skyrocketed every time she looked at Peter. Babies were meant to be surrounded by love on all sides, and she knew that no matter how much love she gave him, there was always going to be some form of isolation imposed on her child. With the way things were, realistically, Meredith didn't have too many to rely on other than her daddy, and she was more than willing to invite her brothers and sister in as much as she could.

Yes. Even Regina.

"Did you call Coralee this morning?" Meredith asked, smoothing over Peter's face with loving fingers as he settled into Curtis's lap. "Is she still mad at you?"

"Yeah and no. Were you eavesdropping, punk?" He asked, batting at her arm with a minute free hand.

"What? No." Meredith made a funny face in Peter's direction. "Your room is across from mine, and you're loud. It's not eavesdropping if the Pearl family down across the woods can hear you too."

Her brother snorted. "Shut up. If Marsha 'n Grady Pearl know anything's going on between me and Coralee, it's because you ran down and told them like the gossip you are."

"Nuh-uh."

"Yes-huh."

Meredith slapped his shoulder. "Nuh-uh!"

"Nuh-uh! Nuh-uh!" Bill walked through the door, hair mused in all different directions. "You guys. What are we? Twelve?"

Bill caught sight of Peter before he could narrow-in on their refrigerator, and made a beeline for the baby. He waved his hands about to distract the boy, until Peter was beaming up at his uncle with utter joy. "Hi buddy! Hi! Good morning!"

Peter squealed and kicked, as much as he good, upon being showered with attention. Meredith left them there for a moment to gather up Peter's clothes – those that had been given to him courtesy of his aunt Regina. Contrary to what one might expect, the Quills hadn't a hoard of baby clothes to spare for Peter, even when there were mountains of forgotten shirts and pants and vests all clustered in their old dressers and drawers.

When she returned, Meri saw Peter still sitting in Curtis's lap and just as jolly as she'd left him, while Bill sat at the head of the table stuffing food into his mouth and their Daddy was at the stove frying breakfast.

"Hit the road, Jack." Meredith ordered, approaching her brothers and son. She kicked at Bill's side playfully with one foot.

"No way, there's an empty seat right there!" Bill argued. He gestured at the seat opposite Curtis's side of the table with a fork.

"You take that one! I gotta dress my kid, and I had it first before your butt claimed it." Meredith elbowed him away when she was close enough, nudging and nudging

"Bill, let your sister sit in the chair." Their father intoned from the stove.

Bill huffed in exasperation and handled his plate with two hands like a monkey afraid of having its food taken before scooting to the next seat opposite of Curtis.

Regina was the last to come in, shuffling around in her slippers with a grungy, old, and spotty robe on once eggs and toast had been served.

She ignored it all and headed straight to their cabinet of glasses and mugs. "What's all this? The Rams sprint in with autographs while I was sleepin'?"

"If they did, you'd be the last to know." Bill quipped back through a mouthful of eggs. "So, sure."

"Sit down with us, Gina. I made some for you too." Greg Quill poured water into his glass and gestured with an aging hand for his eldest to sit down at the other end of the table. Regina had poured boxed wine into a glass until it practically overflowed and dripped down to the floor, but no one said a thing as she made her way to the table and slumped down.

"Thank you for breakfast, daddy!" Meredith chimed, like she was ten-years-old again, when everyone was seated at the table. She was feeling a new wave of delirious, having already been up since 6 'o'clock and only having slept four hours before that, but at least it was the giddy kind of feverish.

'Thank you's' chorused around the table in kind.

"Can Peter have toast, Meredith?" Bill asked in between slices of bread smeared with egg.

"Not yet. Call me again with the same question in another month, Bill." Meredith replied, sipping her water. "And don't start with the whole 'Peter might have razor teeth' theory' when you do."

"I'm not gonna check." She added.

"I wouldn't ask that." Bill assured her.

"But I did realize yesterday that we've asked you all kinds a' questions, like that one, an' you've been a good sport 'n all, but no one ever asked... Uh." Bill cleared his throat. "How'd it happen?"

The sounds of cutlery on chipped, mismatching plates faded.

"How did what happen?" Meredith's brow furrowed while she chewed.

"How did you 'n… the blue thing, like…" Bill made poignant gestures with his hands as word replacements, leaving little to be imagined over

Regina set her mug down, and put a hand up to her forehead. "Oh my God, Bill. Of all the things."

"I mean," Bill's face drained of blood. "Was it like being attacked by a face hugger or – ?"

"Bill." Their father interrupted, while looking just as green around the gills.

"Not at the table." Curtis chided, still trying to figure out how he was supposed to spread jam over his toast. "While we're eating."

"Yeah, Bill." Meredith ignored them with a wicked expression, responding sarcastically. "I 'met up' with a face sucker from Alien and Peter burst outta my chest while y'all weren't lookin'."

The woman shook her head.

"I swear, you 'n your ridiculous imagination." She teased.

Bill gaped. "I'm ridiculous? Me? The one who doesn't have an alien for a baby?"

"Yes!" Meredith laughed. "Does Peter got acid spit or an insect shell for a body? No. And did'ja ask Regina where Michael came from? No! Cause we all know how babies are made, slow ass."

"So, it was just… the old-fashioned way?" Bill was a second away from scratching his noggin in confusion like he was a three stooges character. He almost looked kind of disappointed over the information he'd been given, having thoroughly disassociated from the fact that what they were discussing was in conjunction with something private and bizarre.

Meredith sympathized; she couldn't blame Bill for being let down – alien folk weren't like what the movies said they'd be.

"'Old-fashioned way'" Regina's drawl echoed from within the glass she was nursing. The oldest Quill woman stared from over the rim of her wine cup, looking 20 years older than she should've with the dark bags visible beneath her eyes and her wan cheeks.

Meredith nodded. "Uh-huh. But I ain't tellin' you all the details, I don't care if we're family."

Bill's face screwed up instantly, and he made a retching noise of disgust without further comment. All the Quills gathered around Meredith cringed as one like a band of revolted children.

"Please don't." Curtis muttered. He covered Peter's ears with his hands in emphasis, though seemed weary if in case she did decide to regale them with stories. Meredith said some weird shit just to poke buttons, it hadn't ever been beneath her – and having to live with the mental images of something like that between his little sister and an unseen, otherworldly creature while knowing that they were real was too much to even consider.

"That thing that left you 'n Peter probably ain't comin' back." Regina put a stop to their banter without warning.

All eyes were on Regina, stewing in her chair; Meredith's jaw hung open at the sudden hostility. Even though in retrospect the older woman had made similar biting remarks in the three months that the Quill family had remained under the same roof at one time after year apart.

It was still 10 o'clock in the morning and it was plain as the face of a canyon wall that her sister was rearing for a fight, a repeat fight of the last fifty they'd had in a month's time.

"How would you know? You never even met Peter's father." Meredith frowned at her sister from across the table.

"Because you never told anybody you were –! That you were –! … Jesus Christ!" Regina's voice rose to a shout. She grabbed a handful of her own sparse hair and yanked in disbelief. "You never said anything about cavorting around with a fucking alien!"

"Who would've believed me?" Meredith cried, unable to keep her own volume down even with Peter right next to her. She was completely incredulous. "You? You never believe anything I say, ever. You haven't since we were kids!"

Bill put his head in his hands. "Are we really doing this now? In the morning after Christmas?"

"It's been months!" Regina rounded on their brother. "And we've barely talked about shit! We have an fucking alien in our house and y'all are treating it like everythin's hunky-dory."

"Three months and you ain't been sober for more than a full day." Meredith snapped viciously. She felt a wash of self-hatred the instant those words were out of her mouth, but she couldn't take them back. "How're we gonna talk when you can't even think straight, Gina?"

"Stop that right now." Greg Quill cut in. His mouth formed a hard line as he glared between Meredith and Regina both. The former shrunk away but Regina was a mad bull, already red in the face and shooting daggers at Meredith.

"Nobody's seen him except you! The only proof we have is bein' there when the baby was born in the first place!" She slurred. "You never called any of us, or, or, I don't know!"

"Or what?" Meredith exclaimed. "The government? Are you serious? See, now you sound even crazier than you accuse me of being!"

"Anybody, you nutcase! You should'a called somebody!"

Greg Quill sat back in silence, tuning his children's shouting match out in favor of observing his truly unique grandson. Peter encompassed his entire view, as he seemed to be on the same plain of distraction that left the serious complications between his family behind. The boy gurgled and rocked uncoordinatedly where he was settled in Curtis's arms, looking with interest with anything and everything. There was plenty cluttering their old kitchen, from the ridiculously loud yet never late grandfather clock on one ugly wallpaper-ed wall to the cabinet of brittle china that'd never been used in three decades on the other side.

Peter, after a while of wobbling, instead settled the dapple of sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, right beside Curtis. The half-human and half-whatever reached out to try and catch the illusive light with a chubby hand, curiously waving through what he could with his little fingers like a kitten.

"Meredith, honey." Their father finally looked to his daughter, with his hands laced in front of him on the dining room table as though the worst news possible had just been broken to them. "I don't… I believe you. We all believe you. But, Peter's… father… just left you here."

"A man doesn't just disappear on his wife, or girlfriend, and child 'less he's skippin' out on 'em, that's life, baby."

"Yondu wouldn't do that." Meredith claimed furiously. She stared down at their frumpy, holly-patterned tablecloth, unwilling to meet anyone's eyes. "He promised me! And a promise to me is just as a good as a promise to Peter. He wouldn't break it. He wouldn't."

The kitchen was silent again after that, save for Meredith swallowing back the lump in her throat.

"Mmm," Peter squealed and turned in Meredith's direction. He held onto her as soon as she took him back from Curtis and pressed him to her chest, resting his little head against her collarbone. The contrast of his smooth purple skin against Meredith's was impeccable, and yet the boy looked like he didn't belong anywhere else in the world.

Peter moved, and was distracted before long with the braided chain around his mother's neck. His hand fisted over the shiny round poker chip with little waves carved into it, or what appeared to be waves anyway.

Meredith gently rested her chin against her son's forehead, weaving her fingers through his wisps of hair as she became lost in thought. Regina eventually stormed off, with Curtis rising from the table to go and prevent her from doing anything rash. It was oddly reminiscent of Meredith's one lucid moment after Peter's birth and the week preceding it – when Meredith had hidden away during the first days of labor until they'd dragged on for far too long and she'd had to go to her father for help.

"Has he tried to contact you all?" Her father's voice was a muddled sound to Meredith's left. "Does he even know Peter exists, Mere?"

* * *

 _"Mere… Mered…"_

 _"It hurts." She moaned. "It really hurts, 'n I'm scared."_

 _Meredith lay on her side, tears pooling over just to trickle over her nose and over her cheeks and down her chin. She was curled in bed, sniffling next to a holocom placed as close to her face as possible. Meredith refused to move from her position once she'd heard the familiar static sounds of her link being picked up – painful or not, fully pregnant and supposed to be lying on her back or not, she didn't give a damn._

 _The woman hadn't meant to call again, not after the signal went in and out all morning, and not so that she could just complain about the same thing as she had been, again. But the pain in her abdomen had spiked so much higher that evening that she'd given in to what she would've called lovesickness before (in a high-pitched mockery), yet was now a cry for some comfort. A cry for help, even._

 _"Me…redith." The chopped sound of her name reached Meredith's ears. "'m… sor… ry. …I'm…m so… ry… None of… ri…t."_

 _Meredith broke down into a sob. She'd held back on getting too emotional at any cost beforehand, for two months in fact, since being fired from her job over the phone. In that one instant as her protruding belly burned, however, it was inescapable when faced with the terrible blend of Blue's barely distinguishable voice sounding just as it did when they'd first met and the clear emotion over the broken vocoder._

 _They were both caving in, it would seem._

 _"I got everythin'. I'll be fine, I know it. But I still wish you were here." Meredith hugged the com, letting the heat from the overused device sear into her face and praying that that would take some of the pain off her mind._

 _"I'm sorry I'm so scared." She apologized, burying her face in the sheets._

 _The static rushed on. Quill wanted to lift her head, to ask if he was still there, to move and find a better signal somewhere where she wasn't on a bed and feeling like she was about to die at any moment. Anything._

 _"…know, Sweetheart," He spoke clearly before the signal cut out for good that night._

* * *

A/N: Yes, Meredith is the biggest weirdo, but her family is still, ya know, out there.


	7. (5) Deja Vu

_A/N: Deja Vu :) More Yondu._

* * *

"You gotta live for you, Babydoll." Daddy proclaimed with a gentle smile. "I'll be fine without ya, I promise."

Meredith returned her father's smile through an embarrassing onslaught of tears, and leaned out the window of her car to wrap an arm around Greg Quill's shoulders in a last hug goodbye.

She'd been more than reluctant to leave, at first. Meredith Quill was certainly old enough to lead her own life in 1978, but leaving her daddy felt just as painful as a physical separation from not only her childhood home but also from her town. In an instant, an instant that the woman supposed was her sudden realization moment, it was like she was too young and too incapable of taking care of herself without family to fall back on.

It wasn't like Meri leaving the state of Missouri, or going too far from her father for that matter – she could easily spend a day at the Quill house anytime she chose, or better yet a weekend. Her new 'career' as a secretary for the Mayor was a full-time job, as Meredith had had to remind herself on countless occasions once she'd landed it and kissed Goody Diner goodbye.

She'd been so caught up in the excitement of it all, Meredith hadn't had the opportunity to ponder how odd it was that the Mayor's office was set outside city limits, far west of the Quill household and the part of Bonne Terra that she knew best.

Her daddy had told a friend of a friend about her situation once she'd been given a starting date. For such poor folk, it was the sheer luck of having a father as mellow and good-natured as Gregory Quill, who could make friends with an alligator if it came down to it. His friend's friend's friend had put in a good word on her behalf, and Meredith landed an apartment on the other side of town a week before she was set to work.

Meredith hadn't been given a chance to tour it, with how quickly she'd needed to move in. The low-rise walls were clean and stucco white, and the carpet was dull, linoleum brown save for where it cut off at her doorway. The ceiling crumbled, releasing little white, Styrofoam-seeming particles, if the upstairs neighbors ran or walked with too much weight in their step. The hallway from the living room to the kitchen and dining room, conjoined in the back of the apartment, was narrow and had only a single, solitary yellow light fixture – which she found out immediately to be quite creepy.

The bathroom on the right of the hall had no bathtub, but a stall for a shower with a toilet that didn't always work right. And there was only one bedroom, smaller than her old room, far off to the side of the dining room area, thus making it impossible for guests to sleep anywhere but on the in-built couch.

But as tiny and cramped as it was, Meredith couldn't help falling in love. She had an entire place to call her own, where she could dance inside whenever she felt like it, and place music day and night. The woman wasted no time before heading to as many donation spots in her area to find lawnchairs and pictures of her family to frame and hang on the mantle of the enormous, but no less appreciated fireplace that took up a quarter of the living room. She'd hung chimes over the sliding door to her backyard – a little fenced-in patch of grass with a lone tree above it for shade – and a short-sighted view of the city that stretched beyond more familiar trees and greenery nearby.

Like a well-adjusted adult, Meredith had done her best to find cutlery, plates and cups and cooking utensils that matched (which was damn hard to do when you were searching Goodwills for all your household needs). She afforded lamps along with those glow-in-the-dark star stickers she'd just had to buy, and mason jars and Tupperware and towels that would come in handy down the line.

But the place of honor belonged to the stereo she'd been delivered from Curtis as a going-away gift. In lieu of a television set for the time being, the massive bulk of the stereo was perched on its own wheeling shelf. It had been difficult to lug into the apartment, but Meredith had managed, and had found a channel playing the most current songs thereafter.

The Missourian girl had sat on her unused couch, dazed but happy at the end of the first day, and the day after, listening to the radio until she couldn't keep her eyes open any longer.

Her dreams were hard to describe, but the undercurrent of fear and homesickness she felt winded for a different reason entirely. Her hand was engulfed by another, warm and calloused and bluer than the coastline and a cloudless day put together. She could see blurs of red fabric and blue lips upturned in a brilliant silver smile.

Waking only disoriented her further, but these were dreams that had taken lives of their own long before she'd moved out.

If she ever met him again, she'd certainly give Blue a fine 'how-do-you-do' for haunting her mind.

* * *

One night it sounded like wood was being torn up in her backyard.

Meredith pushed herself up onto her elbows, craning her neck up until it ached. Wood being unstuck, or broken, startled her from her lightened sleep and made her eyes bug out from her skull in the dark. The noise outside couldn't be attributed to the rain, haranguing the little window above her bed, as it was too artificial and obnoxious to Meredith's ears.

She was halfway to calling for her dad to go out with a shovel in hand and scare off whatever it was banging at the glass, amid burying herself beneath her comforter and pillows like a little girl afraid of a monster in her closet. Meredith thought quickly to what might be out there. She cursed herself when she considered the possibility of it being that possum that had tried to nest in the pump house just outside her bedroom.

It had already broken her heart to get the critter out of its chosen nest days before, and yet she'd persisted like a mule. Nonetheless, it scaring her by trying to get back in during a storm and shredding its claws through her (rented) property didn't anger her so much as it worsened that previous guilt. The poor little guy was most likely seeking shelter after slumming it when he'd been kicked out, and was likely to drown or die of a cold if he couldn't make it inside.

Meredith was grateful that there were no stairs in her apartment, for once, when she didn't have to force herself to go down them in the dark. Forget about going to get a midnight snack when she'd been a kid, stairs were one's mortal enemy at midnight, and when you wanted to sneak into the kitchen without anyone else in the house knowing.

She opened the door of her room and treaded toward backdoor before halting abruptly. The woman glanced about haplessly, looking before she leapt for once, to sling up a knife from one of the kitchen drawers and walked on her toes to the back doors of the apartment. The clicking and banging against her door had gotten softer, less discernable from the rainstorm outside, but up close the sound of whirring was unmistakable. She peeled back a few stickler blinds (blinds which she had **not** gotten attached to) and peered out, wincing in anticipation of what horror would await her.

The woman ripped back the blinds and opened the sliding glass door.

"Blue." She said breathlessly, eyes shining and lips curling into and a great, big smile. Berating him for transgressions made at a time that might as well have passed a decade ago were the furthest thing from her mind. But she did ponder briefly if he was real, really standing there at her front door.

She almost wanted to cry out of sheer joy, but she was fixed to the spot, gazing into those crimson red eyes that found ways to show up before the dust settled in her eyes between sleep and waking.

Her alien had returned and his hard, concentrated stare seemed to lessen into a softened gaze filled with curiosity – if she could've convinced herself of it, Meredith might've believed that Blue was looking at her with some kind of wonder too, the longer they faced each other.

Then he reached out toward her, and Meredith could hardly react when she saw the small gun and its needle-looking barrel flash between the dark of her apartment and the shine of her porch-light. It came, thrust from Yondu's hand while he grabbed for her arm with the other, and she felt the prick of the needle puncture the soft skin just behind her ear.

The knife fell from her hand and clattered to the floor.

* * *

Meredith swore loudly, shoving at Yondu's shoulders while she stumbled backward and bumped against the wall with a loud thud. As she squirmed, wrapping a hand over the spot that he'd shot into, Yondu entered through the door and let it swing shut behind him. He moved a few paces before he looked down and realized that he'd tracked mud on her already-stained white tile walk-in, and grinned before he turned back to wipe his boots on the little mat she'd placed in front of the door.

He opened his mouth, speaking in what Meredith remembered to be the alien's native tongue while he sauntered about, looking around with a smug face. She caught his movements in short glances, and might've given him crap for how he swaggered like he owned her place had it not been for the sting in her neck growing and encompassing the rest of her body.

She felt as if she'd been filled with thousands of insects, scattering inside her cold innards and causing her very nerves to bubble. She moaned, squeezing the side of her neck in a mindless attempt to ease the pain before Yondu eventually squatted next to her with a familiar, shark-like grin.

"… Hurts, don't it?" Yondu said with absolute clarity. The Terran woman focused on his grin and amid the pain and the confusion, she simmered at his smugness; until Meredith's brain processed what had just happened. The scribble-like language that Meredith had had no chance of understanding before had switched on a dime, from mechanical and foreign to perfectly comprehensible without Blue needing to pause for a breath.

"How the hell did you find me?" She repeated her previous question while crawling forward. Yondu followed her as she smacked one hand up against the back of the couch across from them and she began to pull herself up. The sickness was disappearing as rapidly as it'd come, and yet Meredith had difficulty getting a good grip on her own furniture. Her former (recurrent?) guest rose from his crouching position at the same time, grin still wide and feral, though by the arch of his brow he seemed almost disbelieving.

"You ain't changed one goddamn bit." Yondu puffed. "Still a flighty nitwit."

"Well neither have you, ya crazy jackass!" Meredith retorted crassly.

Predictably, Yondu scoffed while whipping a hand through the air indifferently like he was swatting at gnats. "'Cept for the whole 'talkin' in complete sentences' thing."

The alien opened his mouth, but Meredith frowned, tilting her head to the right to eyeball his profile critically, "An' that new scar on your neck. You ain't been takin' proper care of yourself since you been away, I see."

Her outstretched hand floated over his neck instead of her own, but he shot out to grip her wrist before she could lay a finger on him. Unexpectedly, Yondu pulled her closer until their faces were mere inches apart, and he looked ready to… yell at her? Laugh in her face? She was completely uncertain, wholly surprised by his willingness to be so close, and wondered blithely if distance made the heart _really did_ grow fonder. They stared at each other for another prolonged moment, and Meredith couldn't quite help but find the situation familiar.

"You gonna stay for a little while, then go runnin' off to the stars again?" The newly independent woman asked before he could finish what he'd started.

Yondu's jaw hung open slightly. He looked out of his element, and Meredith knew it by the look in his expressive red eyes. His face sent a thrill of electricity to her nerves – this spaceman must not have been questioned very often in his life.

He let her go with an exasperated groan. "That shot was the quickest way to get a translator implanted in your scrawny neck."

Meredith ghosted a hand over her shoulder and let her fingers creep up to behind her ear again. "Translator?"

"Tha's right. Let's ya understand 's many logged languages as there is in the galactic circuit." Yondu nodded. "Got it for a steal on the Underworld market."

He sniggered, like he'd just told her some inside joke, but despite his sudden, twangy English, the woman was clueless. Meredith leaned heavily against the couch and sighed, long and slow. Then she rose from her tired position, a dull look of resignation on her face for Yondu to get a good look at. Meredith wanted him to see how much she suffered having to put up with his ass again.

"Well, thank ya kindly for being so thoughtful." Meredith complimented through her teeth. "Was that what you were off getting when you left me stranded in the woods? All by my lonesome with no real shoes and a threadbare jacket? You know I nearly got whupped for carryin' on out late like that?! Daddy was already riled and you just had to sneak in like some two-bit criminal and drag me to lord know's where!"

Quill pointed an accusing finger in Yondu's face and watched with unrestrained glee as he went cross-eyed at her expense. "And I was hours late for work, I nearly lost my job! And all cussa you! And your – your – pirate crew in that flyin' space bird of yours!"

Meredith mimicked Yondu's earlier actions, bringing him in close by the wrist and having him hunch to face her. Whether she was being humored or not when he scoffed and leaned away, the smaller woman couldn't have cared less.

"And no proper goodbye, no words from wherever you were, or no letter or calls! For such an advanced species as I'd hoped you were, I half-expected y'all to ring up the toaster, but I got nothin'! You better have come down, if for nothin' else, with a good explanation for all this nonsense!"

And like a switch – like the switch from alien-ese to southern-sounding English – Meredith went from hot-headed and dour-faced to smiling a thousand-watt smile at the baffled extraterrestrial.

"I'll go get some blankets, and you can tell me all about it, hepcat." She turned and headed down the hallway, not bothering to turn on the lights in favor of feeling her way to the utility closet.

"You sure ain't changed, woman! Just as much a lunatic as you was a year ago!" Yondu repeated, stressed.

"Don't go nowhere!"


	8. (6) Baby, I'm For Real

_A/N: I hope you like this rollercoaster! Oh, and I really, sincerely appreciate all the reviews. They certainly give me a boost in terms of motivation!_

* * *

"I get it! I left ya stranded!" Yondu's voice came out low and guttural. "Quit smotherin' me for it, woman!"

"I'm not." Meredith chuckled. "You're just bein' a drama queen."

Despite his omnipresent front of self-assurance, which had in no way lessened over time, the alien that kept crashing into Meredith's life had looked awkward once he was shoved into her only armchair. She'd hustled him into her living room once all the spare blankets were taken from her supply closet and stacked in a mound in her arms. And as soon as he'd collapsed beneath her poking and prodding, the woman dumped her threads on top of his head.

It took her an embarrassingly long time, as she played an impromptu tug-o-war game with the growling maniac, to realize that she'd ruined half her supply of bedspreads. Yondu was still damp from appearing out of nowhere in the rain – which had gotten loud enough to be heard from all the way upstairs. Her guest was dripping from his head down to the toes of his boots once he'd entered her home, and had tracked grass and dirt in as well, making dark footprints appear on the lightly-colored carpet.

She'd expected no less, but Meredith couldn't help thinking that Blue had some nerve to come trouncing in and wrecking her fine things after he'd shot her.

"Get this shit off'a me!" Meredith watched him scramble beneath the "assault", a violently energetic shape whose space fixings jingled and jangled enticingly, even while she patiently threw more covers over the bare spots he'd managed to punch his way through.

Quill readied another set of blankets, floral patterned and darn near the prettiest she had (that she'd saved from when she was twelve and had loved the very idea of The Secret Garden).

"What's the magic word?" She sung teasingly.

Yondu let out a frustrated groan in reply. "Motherfu –!"

"Nope!" When it didn't seem like he was going to bend to her whims any more than he already had, Meredith sighed. "You deserve worse, ya jackass. It's a miracle nobody saw you come in here."

She stumbled back abruptly when Yondu tore the layers off completely and bared his teeth. The harsh lighting from the lamp she'd placed in the corner between couch and chair gave the red sliver of metal (or glass? She still didn't know what that thing was) embedded in the top of his head a blinding gleam. Silence descended upon them both as Yondu took in what she'd buried him under, and Meri fought valiantly to suppress the giggles that threatened to erupt from her mouth at how incensed he grew. The alien shook everything down to the floor, virtually shuddering when the flowery coverlet slithered down and out of his lap.

"Okay, now you're really jus' bein' dramatic." Laughter bubbled up from her throat, making her snort. "They're jus' blankets!"

Meredith smacked the side of his shoulder good-naturedly, still laughing a little too hard. "You should see your face! You're such a sourpuss, Blue!"

Yondu stilled, looking up at the woman from beneath furrowed brows. "Wha's tha' now? Some kin'a Terran insult I should be offended over?"

Meredith's mood did a 180 upon the realization that she'd never called him by that nickname aloud – not to his face. "Nooo… it's not… If I called ya 'yellow' it would be, but that's a different story… don't ya know what colors are?"

"I know what 'blue' means, ya idjit." He took her increasingly anxious look at being genuinely idiotic to rise from the chair and stand at his full height. While Yondu didn't exactly tower over Meredith, he was the one looking down at her now, and in her state of mortification it felt to her as though she'd shrunk.

"Oh. Oh! Sourpuss." She laughed it off as heat rose to warm her cheeks. "You are one, and yes you should be offended! A sourpuss ain't nothin' to be proud of, y'all can't have any fun as grumpy as ya are."

She pointed at him directly – fearless or stupid – Meredith figured it didn't matter anymore. "Means you should change your attitude, sir."

"Really?" The man reached out and maneuvered Meredith's accusatory finger in the opposite direction, and had her point back at herself. "I wonder if it's a mirror ya should be sayin' tha' crap to, not me."

His hand was stark and warm while it lingered on her own, but Meri kept her cool long enough to scoff. "You're kiddin' me."

"Mm-hm. Matter of fact, I don' jus' wonder or think neither, I know." He looked at her smugly. "Two standard weeks with you, little miss sunshine, is enough ta drive the saintliest Zatoan to commit sin and throw 'imself outta the nearest airlock."

"Ugh! Well, excuse me for showin' you hospitality!" She didn't care if she was being childish; Meredith stomped her foot on the ground. "Or for comin' around and letting you have a little basic human decency while you was prob'ly dyin' in my backyard!"

"Nobody was askin' fer your help or your hositaliny!" Yondu barked. "'Specially not me, lady!"

Meredith's brows shot up to her hairline as she stared at the bizarre man. "You'd rather I just left ya there? If I let you die?"

"Cause that might just be the stupidest goddamn thing I ever heard in my entire life! What kind of person do you think I am that I'd just abandon you soon as I saw you?!"

Genuine anger broiled inside of her, as Meredith shot a genuine glare at Yondu from her vantage point. She couldn't remember what had started this avalanche of a conversation, but she did have the image of her companion strewn and bloody in the creek behind her daddy's house. He'd been worse for wear and barely conscious when first she'd seen him, and his blue body had grown colder and heavier the longer Meredith let her fear of his strange appearance get the best of her.

"You don' even know me." He said quietly. If she didn't know any better, Meredith would've believed she'd stunned him just a little bit, which was sad in its own right.

The woman's expression soured, and her nose scrunched in distaste at his claim. She had it in her to debate that belief, because with or without the implant in her neck and the second chance to see Blue again, Meredith felt like she had some idea of who he was. Such a thought may have depressed her as a child who delighted in being far removed from humanity at large, but she appreciated it in the creature in front of her – more than he knew, apparently.

"So?" Meredith argued instead.

* * *

"Are you ever gonna tell me why you came back?"

Yawning, Meredith lifted the portable antique clock from her mantle and made a courageous attempt at telling the time while bleary-eyed. She'd gone to bed at around ten o'clock, with the intention of training her mind and body to obey a practical sleep schedule. It was terrifying to imagine that she might be late for work since, unlike the diner, her new job was prestigious and required a real adult to do it, rather than a pimply-faced teenager.

The 'training' hadn't been going as smoothly as Meri would've liked, but she'd made up the rules as she went along since high school, and always excused herself for staying up a few hours extra.

Four in the morning wasn't only a few hours extra.

"Why do'ya wanna know?" They were near her fireplace – still too massive for her shell of an apartment – where Yondu sat on his haunches and tended to a budding fire.

He'd gone out the sliding doors again (without her consent!) and returned with a mountain of singed and already smoking wood of varying size to throw into the grate. Of course, he grumbled himself into an early grave, so to speak, at how 'damn freezing' it was inside. Her stupor over seeing him come and go without the long-coat to cover his arms lasted a good minute, much to her dismay, but she got in a retort about how it was his fault for not bundling up like she'd wanted him to in the first place.

She might've asked where he'd gotten the firewood from in the first place, but after deliberating on it, Quill discovered that she'd rather not hear the crime from his mouth. She prayed to any god listening that she wasn't going to find that patch of woodland near her complex all burned down in the morning, but that was about it.

"Well, I can't imagine it's cus you missed me." Meredith leaned against the cool part of the mantle, which happened to be the scratchiest part of the bricks. "Unless I'm wrong and you really did travel all the way down here just cus you missed me?"

Yondu shoved her poker/ash scraper directly into the fire, causing a plume of smoke to erupt from the grate and travel through the mesh curtains surrounding it. "Nope!"

He had the audacity smirk at her, and while her heart may have fluttered once (or twice at most), she truly felt the exhaustion she'd repressed throughout the night as it creeped up through aching muscles and the soreness of her feet.

"Then why?"

Yondu sprung up, but instead of facing her when back on his feet, he immediately grabbed an ornament from the opposite side of the veneer. "You Terrans sure like ta hoard useless shit."

"Hey! Put that ba –" Meredith balked as she received a faceful of Yondu's hand. He gave her a light shove backward, suffocating her with the copper smell of oil and damp wood, as he inspected the miniature toy car that she had placed rather meticulously above the fireplace.

Meredith pulled back, far enough to rip out of his hold with a snarl. "Yondu… Whatever the hell your full name is! You put my car back where it belongs or so help me god!"

"The hell's a caw-er?" He asked. Yondu put the model back in favor of the trinket right next to it. He dangled the plush monkey with its button eyes and over-elongated limbs far too close to the fire for Meredith's liking.

She made a grab for it, tiredness receding while the blue bastard traded his former curious wandering for dangling her prized ornaments above her head. "Come get 'em, girlie."

"Quit it!" She snapped, brushing up on her tiptoes to snag the monkey back. "Don' take stuff that don' belong to ya, a-ho –!"

He threw the monkey in her face next. Fuming, the woman pulled the stuffed animal away and set it back to an alternative spot above the fireplace, nose literally in the air as she positioned it just so. It was honestly like she was dealing with a child, and Meredith was considering how much it wasn't worth the effort as Yondu manhandled each, and every decoration she'd scrounged up to make the fireplace less imposing, and more like home. Her home on the other side of town had a mantle too, one that had bared angel figurines that Mrs. Quill had once collected, and pictures of her and her siblings, and some of their old pets playing in the yard. There were the old clay handprints of Regina's and Curt's from elementary school still gathering dust interspersed between everything, from what Meri could remember. That mantle had been made of darkly-painted wood, which was easy to hammer nails into so that they could hang stockings up come Christmas time as well.

She'd done her best to mimic her family's traditions, though she knew in her heart it would never quite be the same. Quill didn't need him ruining that, too.

"Whas this un?"

"That's a snow globe." Meredith replied, after counting to five in her head slowly. She tilted her head to one side. "It's San Francisco… That's a city a hundred miles away from here."

Yondu grunted, still eyeing the tiny thing acutely.

"Daddy went on a business trip. I was fourteen years old and he said I wasn't too old fer a present, so he brought it back for me. Said all kinds a' strange, colorful people lived there." She babbled onward, feeling a tight compression within while they both stood in one place. "I always wanted to go myself and see, but we never could afford it just ta have fun, ya know?"

"All them colorful people live on this weird, red…" He leaned in closer, eyes narrowed while he peered in the tiny glass orb. "This a bridge?"

The woman near him covered her mouth with a hand, trying not to laugh at his ignorance. Who knows what got Yondu's, jackass extraordinaire, knickers in a twist.

"No, but it is the Golden Gate Bridge!" She drew closer, until her previous joy came back in tingles throughout her joints. "It's famous on Earth, lots a people all over the world go there just to look at it, take pictures – the whole shebang!"

"Sounds like a waste o' time ta me." Yondu deadpanned.

"Don' they got tourist-y stuff where you're from?"

Yondu's large, blue hand cut through the air violently as he just about threw the object down, making Meredith clench up in wait for the knickknack to shatter after slamming into the ground. It didn't hit and shatter, thank the Lord, but the blue man didn't open his hand to justify the action. She grabbed a handful of his jacket and tugged before either could react.

"Woah, woah, woah! Ya don't have to be so hard on it!" She shook her head with a frown. "Gently. Be gentler, like this."

The Terran demonstrated with an invisible snow globe in her palm, which she clutched tenderly before shaking it from side to side. Yondu looked at her from the corner of his eye and snorted, but he followed her instructions for once, just to watch as sparkling flakes of white rushed to the top of the globe and came fluttering down to submerge the tiny model bridge and cars beneath it.

Meredith had moved in closer, resting a hair away from against Yondu's shoulder in her haste to get to the object, which she had no doubt seen and shaken hundreds of times before. She even tapped delicate fingers against the glass, tracing the patterns of the glitter, trying to refrain from looking up at her companion's expression

"See? You shake..." She smiled softly. "And then, it's snowin'."

Meredith had the patience of a rambunctious bloodhound. She couldn't resist peeking at his face after a little while, especially when he didn't scoff outright at another one of her possessions. And lo and behold, if this paltry little snow globe didn't make a hidden smile appear on the gruff, militaristic creature's scarred face.

Blue looked more boyish than when she'd first seen him, unconscious and vulnerable in Gunn Wood, and Meredith would've been lying if she didn't find his strange fascination sweet.

"It's not a stereo, but it is kinda magical, huh?"

"Hn." Was all Yondu said. When the last of the glitter and snow drifted to the bottom of the globe, the tiny smile and softened gaze were whisked right off his face.

"Oh! The stereo! Is that why you came back?" The Terran took the snow globe out of Yondu's hand and put it back on the mantle before she grabbed his wrist absentmindedly and stood them both in front of the grand stereo as it faced the rest of the room.

"Did ya miss the music? I bet that's it! You don't get human music in the stars, but you loved mine so much that you just had to come back for more! Right?" It was the most ridiculous explanation that anyone, even Meredith Quill, could've come up with.

Yondu's expression said as much, at least. "What? No!"

"Well then why the hell are you here?" She stamped her foot, scuffing up more of the ruined carpet in her wake. The alien sighed through his nostrils, like a steer before it rampaged.

"You still got that sweater, don't ya?" He asked snidely.

"What sweater?"

"The one you forced on me after I was stuck up in that shack o' yours. Or whatever the hell it was you kept me in."

"It was a barn."

He threw his hands up. "It don't matter! Show me where you put it!"

* * *

The man had followed her down the hall and, in the most un-gentleman-like fashion possible, hung inside her room while she dug in her tiny, personal closet.

He was grinning savagely when the sweater was revealed, wadded up and stuffed inside a garbage bag inside a tub of a box. "I knew you'd keep it."

"Yeah, okay, but why does it matter?" Meredith's face was surely red as a beet at all the implications of her keeping her former guest's former, temporary sweater – which had once been her brother's, before this whole mess got started. There was no simplistic explanation for why she'd kept the ugly thing – the best explanation that she could make on the spot was that it was a sentimental keepsake from Bill, but Meredith didn't have any clothes from Curtis or Regina in her apartment.

"Look at that. You didn' even unwrap my present. Smart girl." By his tone, it sounded to Meri like Yondu had assumed she wouldn't have done more than gathered the ugly thing up and kept it hidden at the bottom of a box.

Without another word, Yondu ripped the clothing out of her hand. In the same instant, a square, metal chip with a big red button protruding from its center greeted the floor from the confines of the wooly monstrosity. The glow of it matched the glow from Yondu's head ornament – it was a dead-giveaway that this thing belonged to the spaceman himself, though Meredith couldn't begin to imagine how or why it'd appeared.

"I don't remember this being in there a year ago." Meredith couldn't blink. She bent down and picked the chip up, feeling its smooth metallic surface lined with grooves and teeny-tiny knobs at every corner. Yondu invaded her personal space long enough to press his thumb against the button and the blaring red glow dimmed until it was dead.

"It's a tracker."

She gazed at Yondu, immobilized. "What?"

"A tracker." He repeated. "I put it here 'fore I was gone, so I knew where ya were all year long. Now I'm here to get it back. Happy now?"

"You did what?" Meredith questioned pointblank. The twirling, whirling feelings inside her surrounding the mystery of just what her former guest had left behind slowly ground to a halt when his sneer didn't waver. "You didn't."

"You heard what I said." He answered smugly. "But relax, it's already done, no reason ta get –"

Meredith didn't think twice before she smacked him across the face. The action prompted her to drop the tracker chip entirely, and it was flung to the other side of the room.

"After I saved your life?!" She shrieked.

It wasn't a second later before she gasped, eyes as wide as globes. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry…"

He advanced forward a few steps – for Yondu, a few steps were an awful long stride. He was looming over her, eyes lit with irritation while he massaged the side of his jaw that she'd struck.

"Oh, would you give tha' a rest, already?!" Any imposing, dark words she might've anticipated coming from his sharp tongue were curbed by his complaining. He was grouching… but that was it, funnily enough, as Yondu made no further moves to return the slap or scream in her face.

"I was doin' ya a favor. I couldn't stick around forever, so I stuck a tracker on ya fer your protection!" Amidst his yowling, there was a moment where Yondu froze entirely, like he'd just said too much. It was a curious thing, that disappeared within the blink of an eye.

"Not like ya noticed, anyway. Airhead." He grumbled quietly, barely rubbing the roughened cheek with just as roughened fingers.

"Protect me? From what?" She demanded, legs locked and hands on hips. He didn't answer quick enough for her liking.

"If you went through all the trouble of making it easier for us to talk –" Meredith started. "Then why the hell won't you talk to me?!"

"Listen! It don't matter anymore!" Yondu said gruffly, holding her at arms-length. "You wanted ta know why I came back, and now ya know! Don' ask if you can't handle what's comin'!"

She wiggled in his grasp incessantly. "What were you protectin' me from?"

"It. Don't. Matter. Now." He grit his shiny silver teeth with the aggravation. "Drop it, ya loon."

Meredith pitched forward. "Drop me!"

Her feet had been lifted off the ground before he released her, and by that time they eyed each other in much the same way as when Meredith had tried to keep him from escaping her family's barn. There was no arrow in her face this time, however.


End file.
